The Aeolian Harp
by Greekhoop
Summary: Sequel to "Semblance of Eden". Legato spares Dominique's life after her confrontation with Vash, but his mercy comes with strings attached. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 1**

Disclaimer: It doesn't belong to me.

Author's Notes: Thanks EAG for all her help, and everyone who read Semblance of Eden. While this is a sequel to that story, you'll probably still be able to follow along if you don't want to read it first.

* * *

It was nearly second sundown when they reached Babylon again.

Midvalley sat by the stone in the fading light of the second sun, duller red and less vivid than its greater, brighter twin. He had planted a flowering thornbush here almost two years ago, and the shoot had grown, bloomed, and died, tumbling away into the desert. At least that's what he guessed.

It was one of the few plants that could make a living here, and it had been either that or that fat-leafed blue-green cactus that she always hated, because it'd leave milky juices all over her boots.

His fingers played over the stone, trailing through a season's worth of dust and sand. The etching was already wearing away, melting back into desert.

D-O-M-I

He brushed away the rest, but it was gone already. Stripped by winds and sand.

"Patch…" Midvalley sighed. "Well, I could go and find the son-of-a-bitch who sold me this piece of shit. But I don't have time today. So I brought you these."

Reaching into his sun-faded suit (it was black once, he remembered, black as midnight), he pulled out a handful of flowers. Thin paper, crackly tissue, slightly bent on their twisted paper stems, crushed from being in his coat.

"I bought these in town, because I didn't want him to know. But you probably don't want to hear about him." Midvalley cleared his throat. "I thought…a girl…always needs something pretty, right?"

He scooped away a handful of sand and planted them over the grave.

"Well. I can't stay long. The steamer's pulling away in an hour. We're going to Augusta. I don't know whether I'll come back this time." His jaw tightened. "It's getting really serious."

The distant rumble of the steamer.

The wind picked up, ruffling his hair, and the flowers caught in an updraft, scattering to the dunes that were slowly eating the little gated cemetery, burying the buried.

Midvalley stood up. "I'm sorry, Patch. I tried." He pulled out a flask. "This is all I can really do." His words closed up in his throat, and he poured, watching the amber liquid soak into the sand.

He emptied the flask and dropped it. In time either the desert would eat it or someone would take it; it didn't matter to him. Midvalley watched the horizon, eyes lost on the setting sun.

"There you are."

Midvalley cringed at that voice. He liked to think that he still had some secrets, and that this place was one of them. He had paid cash for the gravestone and the plot, money out of his own pocket. And he had been careful, ever so careful, to not be seen coming here on the few occasions he'd had to visit.

It had been a big year for him.

"Here I am," Midvalley said. He stood up, and moved a little, planting himself in front of the grave. If Legato got much closer, he'd be able to read the letters on it, faded or not.

"We mustn't delay," Legato said. "We can't afford to miss that steamer."

"There's still a little time. I was just taking care of something. You know, in case I don't get a chance to come out here for a while."

Legato came forward slowly, and Midvalley thought about holding his ground. He only lasted about two steps, though, before he cleared out of Legato's path. He moved aside, bowing his head. "Boss…"

Midvalley thought about explaining first, before Legato could ask. But, hell, what was there to explain? This wasn't exactly rocket science here. This wasn't science at all. It wasn't even something made by men.

Legato looked down at the tombstone for a while. "I see," he said at last.

He didn't kneel or crouch down, didn't drag his coat through the dirt. Midvalley had sometimes thought that it must have taken a lot of effort to keep that stupid coat so white and crisp in a place like this. But perhaps no more effort than it took to maintain that perfect body no one ever got to touch, or that handsome face that he never seemed to want anyone to look at.

"It's been here ever since," Midvalley said. "You didn't even let me have the body, so there's not really anyone buried under there. I just thought maybe if I put the marker here, near her hometown, she'd know where to look for it."

"The body…" Legato mused. "Yes. I had another use for it."

"I know. I'm not asking you to be sad or anything. I mean, I didn't do it for you."

There had been a time when he would have been too terrified to say even that much, but these days he felt very little of that old fear. Something had changed; Midvalley suspected it was himself. Legato was as constant as death. And if it seemed to him that something was different about Legato these days –perhaps he had lost his cruel streak; he no longer seemed to take the same pleasure in hurting that he once had – that was surely just his imagination.

And yet he was asking, "_Are_ you sad?"

"Pardon me?"

"Are you sad?" Midvalley said again. "Even a little? She was in love with you. You knew that, didn't you?"

"I knew," Legato said.

"Do you even know what that word means? I mean, Boss, no offense, but…"

"No, none taken. You are the artist among us, Midvalley. It must be necessary for you to have a deeper understanding of such things than the common man. I won't claim to have your sophistication, but I believe I understand now a little better than I did before."

"Do you miss her?"

Legato shook his head. "Next you'll be asking me if I wish I hadn't let it happen. Let's not travel that thorny road. It isn't something either of us particularly wants to do, is it?"

"Yes, sir," Midvalley muttered. He wished Legato would just leave. He had been hoping for another few minutes here, to finish saying what needed to be said. But he could see now the Sandsteamer shimmering on the far horizon, drawing closer by the minute.

He knew he wasn't going to get a chance, not even to tell her goodbye. Legato wasn't even going to let him have that.

"Anyway," he said suddenly. "Anyway, it's better than Nick ever got."

"Yes," Legato said mildly. "You're right."

He wasn't fooling anyone. Midvalley knew Legato was surprised to hear that name from him, though probably not as surprised as Midvalley was that he'd said it. He had hardly even dared to think it in weeks. Whenever he'd come close, he'd pulled away violently, as if it burned him.

He'd spent a lot of time running through the mnemonic devices from his music school days: Every Good Boy Does Fine. F-A-C-E spells Face. Fat Chicks Go Dancing At Ed's Bar. Every Angel Does Got Beautiful Eyes.

"I barely saw him at all near the end there," Midvalley said. "Always out running around with… you know. But I didn't really miss him then. I could always just look forward to when I'd see him again. Like when you're a little kid and you're in the bathtub and you duck your head under the water and see how long you can hold your breath. Every time you try to make it a little bit longer, because it's like even way back then you understand that the way to appreciate the things you have is to not have them for a while. Then, when you get them back, it's like discovering them for the first time."

Midvalley looked down.

"But then, you're a real pro when it comes to denying yourself. You understand. Maybe. But even if you don't, it's not going to matter much longer. We know each other too well by now, Boss. You and I, we know each other too well to be keeping secrets this late in the game. And I guess you must hate me. I hate you, too. Anyone who knows each other as well as we do ought to hate each other."

"You always hated me, Midvalley. From the moment you saw me."

"Yeah?" Midvalley laughed harshly. "I barely remember anymore. That was so long ago. Did it bother you at all?"

Legato was quiet for a while. At first Midvalley thought that he didn't intend to answer, but it seemed he was only thinking about the reply.

"I had come to expect no different," he said at last.

"Dominique didn't hate you."

"No," Legato said. "Most of the time, she did not."

The way he said it, it sounded like that was the best he could ever hope for. Against his better judgment, Midvalley looked up. Legato's eyes were still turned down, focused on the grave at his feet. And there was something in his still profile that had not been there before, something tinted rose by the light of the red sun. And Midvalley wondered, had he been wrong to think that Legato never changed? For wasn't he looking at a different man than he had a year ago? A man who had changed so slowly, so gradually, that it couldn't even be seen by the naked eye.

Like a star that burnt out a thousand years ago; the light from its death wouldn't reach them until long after it was gone.

"Boss?" Midvalley asked, very softly. "Are you lonely?"

Legato turned his head slightly, and his hair shifted over his face. "I've never been alone, Midvalley. Not even for a moment."

That hadn't really been an answer to his question. But it was so clumsy an evasion, that Midvalley actually felt a little bad. Legato really wasn't very good at things like this. He really hadn't had a lot of practice.

"Right," Midvalley said, and sighed. "I forgot. Anyway, we better get back. We're going to miss that steamer."

Legato turned away from the grave, and he started down the hill. It seemed easy for him to leave it behind. He only looked back once, when they were far enough down the path that it was nearly out of sight. Midvalley wondered if he was remembering anything in particular.

Because Midvalley sure as hell was. He remembered it all.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 2**

If Midvalley was sure of one thing, it was that he'd never seen Dominique run from a fight. In fact, it was usually the other way around.

But here she was, barreling back down the alleyway toward the little inn that they had been staying at, panting and gasping like a beast with hunters hot on its trail. She skidded to a halt in the dust, her hair tangled, sweat dripping from her chin. Their eyes met, and it was then that Midvalley knew, with a startling clarity that could not be denied or doubted, what had happened.

The trick to killing a man with sound was easy. The hard part was not killing everyone around him.

The brain resonated at an E double flat. Somewhere between that and an F-natural, depending on the man, but Midvalley had encountered that maybe once or twice. Now, some people might think of a double E flat as a D, but it wasn't. No, it was its own note all together.

The real trick was amplifying the wavelength just so. Enough to rupture some arteries in the brain. A little double-tongue action to shorten and sharpen the burst of sound, narrowing the sound coming out of a four-inch bell to less than an inch. Maybe a centimeter at most, and getting the right angle.

It all went through his mind as he looked at her, defeated in the dust.

"I told you I didn't want to do this, Patch." The fingers of his right hand played over the buttons of his sax. 'Pritty Lovely By the Pale Moon Lite.' A-minor. He knew it was one of the few songs he played on this thing that she didn't completely hate. "But the boss…"

"I know." Dominique met him boldly, and he could see the Demon Eye burning behind sweat-slick strands of hair. "I'm not afraid. Not anymore."

"I…" The more he raised his left hand, the more he could feel the heft of the gun. "Don't hold it against me, all right?"

"I won't." She didn't even move, didn't even show him the full extent of that Demon Eye, and he knew. He knew she was ready.

"I'm sorry, Patch." His hand was shaking. He could play to a crowd of thousands and not miss a breath, not miss a staggering off-beat, notes that were only two-thirds of a triplet. He could kill a man in a crowd of thousands with a note that flew across a hundred yards to hit him as cleanly as a bullet.

But he couldn't do this.

He pulled the trigger.

His hand jerked even before the recoil, and the bullet rang off a gutter down the street, leaving a smoking hole in the warped metal.

Dominique cringed when the gun went off. Maybe she wasn't afraid, Midvalley thought, but this wasn't what she wanted, either. She didn't have a death wish, no more of one than the average person, at least. She wasn't some revolutionary, proud to take a bullet for the cause.

She didn't have a cause. Neither of them ever had.

When she realized she wasn't dead, Dominique cracked one eye open. Then she sighed, and some of the tension flowed out of her shoulders.

Midvalley wished he could be so lucky.

"You never were any good with one of those," Dominique said. She reached out, and he let her cup her hands around the gun. The sweat on her palms hissed and popped when it came in contact with the hot cylinder.

Midvalley was half wishing she'd take it out of his hand, do that handy little field-stripping trick she knew that would leave it in two useless pieces. But he knew that wasn't what was on her mind.

She lifted the gun so the muzzle rested between her breasts. Her hands didn't tremble, but it didn't really matter because Midvalley's were shaking enough for both of them. She tightened her grip on the cylinder so the chambers couldn't turn.

"Listen," she said. "A fight against that man in red is a fight you can't win. He's not human. I was set up, Midvalley."

"I didn't know, I swear it."

"You're the only one who always thinks everything is your fault. I'm not blaming you. I'm warning you. Now, thumb the hammer back."

He did what she said. "Patch…"

"You know, I always hated it when you called me that."

Midvalley closed his eyes, and his finger grew taut on the trigger. Dominique hadn't relinquished her grip on the barrel of his gun, and this time there would be nowhere for the bullet to go but through her. Let me hit her heart, he thought. Let it be quick. But let it be bloody, too, because only blood means anything anymore…

"Stop."

Midvalley was so startled that he almost squeezed the trigger anyway. He would have, but his finger suddenly refused to move. The rest of his arm, too, was locked in a vice. He knew better by now than to fight it.

Slowly, his eyes fluttered open. Dominique still held the barrel of his pistol to her breast, but she seemed to have forgotten all about it. Her eyes were fixed on a spot just past his left shoulder.

That was where Legato was.

That faint, sneaky shadow of a smile. It made something crawl in Midvalley's gut, like a parasite that wanted out. His body trembled; he could feel Legato's will pressing down on him, overshadowing his every thought and action.

"Very good, Midvalley." With a dismissive wave of his hand, the gun snapped back in Midvalley's grip, emptying its shells into the dust.

He winced at the sound; it seemed to explode behind his eyes.

"You may go." All of a sudden, he was released. Midvalley stared at his gun hand for a moment before dropping it like a dead thing. It clattered on the paving stone next to a handful of shell casings.

"Wait, Boss. It's not her fault." Midvalley held Sylvia before him like a shield, the familiar weight comfortable in his hands. "You can't punish her for getting set up-"

"But I can." Legato stepped forward, cold fingers brushing away a stray drop of sweat from Dominique's chin. "You're dismissed, Midvalley."

"But Boss…"

"Go." And before he could protest further, Midvalley found himself moving away, arms pinned to his sides, legs propelling forward.

"Patch!" Midvalley tried to turn to see her. He only caught a glimpse; she was on her knees in the dust. He stood over her while her hands slowly raised toward her own throat. Then his head snapped around again, so hard that he was sure it gave him whiplash, and behind him, he could hear the sound of her choking.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 3**

It was as if she had fallen asleep with her arm pinned under her body – a million little pinpricks welling up from under the skin as the blood flowed back into the limb. It was like that, only it was all throughout her.

The first breath she took was agony, but by the time she drew another, her body was so glad for the oxygen that it didn't matter anymore. Dominique thought that she would have liked to lay very still for a very long time, because it was going to be a long time before she would be anywhere near capable of moving again.

Between her ears there was nothing but static, but it was starting to clear. Eventually, she could make out a voice, though she knew no one was speaking to her. It was in her head. It was like letters writ long across the sky.

Get up, it told her.

Dominique groaned, and covered her face with an arm.

"Legato…" she tried to say, but her tongue wasn't quite up to the task.

But she knew already that there was no fighting it. She tried to close her eyes, but the words pierced through, printing themselves in bright neon on the backs of her lids. She'd have to do what they said, if she wanted a moment's peace.

Dominique tried to push herself up, but her muscles cramped and then gave out and she landed in the dust with a gasp, knocking the breath from her.

"Get up," Legato's voice said to her.

"I can't!" And she would have shouted more, but she was crying now, her arms wrapped around her middle because each sob pierced her lungs like a hot lance. Then she felt him blow through her, plucking her strings. She moved without knowing she would be able to, struggling to her feet. Her body swept her forward, stumbling through empty and unrecognized city streets. Dominique bent over, hugging her ribs. Black spots bloomed in her field of vision, linked together by bolts of lighting in purple and blue. She squeezed her eyes shut, and let Legato guide her steps.

She was in his hands now.

The next time she opened her eyes, Dominique was in the open desert. She knew that she must have fainted, and kept walking in spite of it, because she was on a dirt road now, having left the cobblestone streets of the city behind.

She was compelled to lift her head, and when she did she could see a small fire burning in the distance on the lee-side of a dune. As she approached, he came down to meet her. His shadow was long in the light of the fire. In the moonlight, his coat was white as a bleached bone. As he drew close, she felt his magic rush out of her like a tide. She stumbled, and fell to the sand. Legato stayed where he was. Not far away, but not coming any closer, either. His head was tilted to the side, like he was listening to something far away.

A light came from behind her like the dawn, and lit the sky as bright as day.

But by then, Dominique saw only darkness.

* * *

She came to slowly. Something heavy was over her, and she felt warm though the air whistling around her face was cold. She guessed it was past midnight, some time in those few hours when the desert heat had faded to a memory.

Dominique opened her eyes, taking note of the strip of cloth that had been tied around the right side of her face to replace the broken patch. Above her, the ghost of a moon hovered amidst wisps of parallel clouds, like a pale face peeping through blinds. She knew she wasn't dead; the pain in her body attested to it. She could have cried with relief, if she had tears left.

And then the monstrous horror of it sank in.

"The moon…" Her voice was a rasp.

"Yes. Isn't it something?"

Legato sat by the dying embers of a fire, wearing only a thin black shirt, slightly faded around the collar where the sun had touched it. He didn't look cold, though he had taken his coat off, she realized now, to cover her.

"Here." He opened a canteen and leaned over, tipping it carefully into her mouth. Water laced with crystals of ice, and she nearly moaned from the pleasure. She managed to take it from him shakily, and propped herself up against a dune.

She drank and drank.

"Don't worry. I have more. But later." Legato gently pried the canteen from her, setting it aside.

"Wait…" Dominique said. She stretched out a hand after the canteen, but her stomach knotted painfully and she only had enough time to push Legato's coat aside before she vomited into the sand.

"You're dehydrated," Legato said mildly, as she retched.

"I guess so." She pushed sand over the mess, and crawled up the dune to sit beside him, holding his coat together at her throat. It dragged behind her as she moved. Heavy, from all those souvenirs he had buckled to it.

"Are you cold?" she asked.

"Not particularly."

"It's okay. We can share." She draped half the coat over his shoulders, and pulled the other half around herself. She had to press up against his side to fit. Eventually, his arm snaked around her waist, and he held her for a while, without saying anything.

"I thought I was dead," she murmured

"You were. For six minutes, to be precise. Then seven and a half, while I had your body moved into position."

"Seven and half…" Dominique shook her head. "Christ, Legato. You probably gave me brain damage. Thanks a lot."

"I had to be careful," Legato said. "I had to be very thorough. I wasn't supposed to let you live."

"So why did you?"

"I still have a use for you."

"Well, maybe I don't want to work with someone who'd kill me. Twice. If you want me to go after that man in red again, you can just forget it."

"No," Legato said. "Not him."

Dominique looked at him skeptically. "Then I'll think about it. But don't act like I owe you something just because you brought me back. If anyone's racking up debts here, it's you."

"I would prefer if we didn't think about it in those terms."

"I'm sure you would," she muttered. "Do you have any food? I'm starving."

"I'm not surprised." Legato pulled away from her, and turned to start the fire blazing again. When he returned, he pulled a package of crackers out of his pocket and offered them to her. She ate ravenously, and when she was done tossed the wrapper aside. The wind caught it, and swept it out over the desert.

"How long was I out?" she asked.

"Not that long."

"By whose calendar?"

"I wouldn't want to alarm you unnecessarily."

"Tell me."

"Three...no, four days."

She laughed suddenly, more in relief than anything else. "Days? I thought you were going to say weeks. Months. A year. How'd you do a trick like that?"

"Just a light coma. Deep at first…then." Legato shrugged. His fingers brushed her hair aside, touching the healing bruises on her throat. "I hope I didn't hurt you too much."

"I don't remember," Dominique lied. The feeling of her own hands throttling the life out of her while she stared up at him… It was going to haunt her to her grave.

He looked at her curiously, his face serious, the way he looked when he ate something with slow deliberation. It made her think that he almost never smiled if he wasn't hurting someone. Or about to hurt someone.

"What?" she said.

"Hmm? What?" He nudged a log with the toe of his boot, and it crashed into the coals, sending up a swarm of embers.

Quickly, she changed the subject. She had come to accept that she almost never wanted to know what was on his mind; certainly not at a moment like this. "What do you want me for? Why didn't you kill me?"

"I need you to help me with something. Someone." His voice grew quiet, as if he had a secret that even he was afraid of giving life to by speaking it out loud. Like a magic word that would summon a demon.

"I need you to go to Byzantium."

Her eye turned cold. "That's near Babylon, isn't it?"

"About thirty miles east. It's a town off the mainline that stretches from January to December."

"Why there?"

"It's a Plant research station on the edge of the Black Gorge. The one that divides the hemispheres."

"So what?" she said. "I don't want the visitor's guide. I want to know what's so important about it."

He didn't answer right away, and she sighed. "You can tell me. What am I going to do?"

But still, he was silent, and she shifted forward to take his shoulders in her hands. "Legato, just spit it out already."

He said nothing, but his hand slipped into his pocket and he drew out a scrap of paper. Dominique took it from him, turning it so the moonlight fell on it.

The photograph was old, and the woman in it was not young. She wore a long gingham dress, and kept her hair pinned up neatly. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she smiled a patient, weary smile, the kind that lasted only as long as it took the photographer to snap the picture. There was a white crease across her body, where the photo had been hastily folded and shoved in a pocket.

"I don't understand," Dominique said. "Who is this?"

"You should find her there, in Byzantium. I need you to find her for me."

"I don't know about this, Legato. I don't exactly have a lot of hard and fast rules to live by, but killing little old ladies doesn't sit right with me."

"I don't want you to kill her. I want you to look after her."

"Why?" she demanded. "For how long?"

"Until the end. Hers, or all of ours. Whichever comes first. She is an old woman; she may not live much longer. If she dies in your care, then you can go free."

"Free," Dominique said quietly. "Free of you…"

"You don't sound happy. I thought this would please you."

He leaned in to kiss her, but Dominique turned away so his lips skated over her jaw instead.

"Do you trust me all of a sudden?" she asked.

He put his lips against her ear and whispered the words, forcing them under her skin. "I trust you."

His hands cupped her shoulders, and his coat slid away and fell to the sand. He pressed her back onto it, and she felt the sand shift under her weight. His hands tangled in her hair, forcing her head back so he could kiss her neck. He worried her earlobe between his teeth.

Dominique ran her hands down his spine, and when she got to his waist she slipped them under his shirt and ran them back up. His skin rippled before her hands, a static charge hopping from fingertip to fingertip like a wildfire skipping from brush to brush.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked. She wasn't, not anymore, but she had the warmth of his body pressing down on her.

"No, not really," he said. And he traced one finger down her chest, plucking at the loose threads on her shirt where buttons were missing.

She remembered how she had lost them, and she blushed hotly. "I didn't… do that."

"I know. I was watching, remember?"

That didn't make her feel better. "It just makes me mad, that's all."

"Shh." He cradled her cheek in one hand, and kissed her. "It's long since passed."

His hand tugged at her belt buckle, and she shifted her legs apart to accommodate him. But when he settled his weight on her, she gasped.

"Sorry. I'm still pretty sore."

"Should I stop?"

"No. Just…"

When she didn't finish, he searched her expression for a moment, and then slowly he nodded. "I will."

He pushed her jeans down. Just past her hips, not far enough for the cold to sting her. Then he unbuttoned his own, and she slipped her hand inside. He was hard already, like he'd been waiting for this for a long time. She tugged his cock loose of his pants, and it became instantly fully rigid in her hand.

He hooked a hand behind her knee and pushed her leg back. A quick snap of his hips, and he was inside her. She gasped, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him close.

When she kept her eyes open, she could see the fragmented moon, looming like death over his shoulder, so she squeezed them shut and buried her face in his hair. And she said his name, over and over, until it was the only word she could say.

Until she couldn't say anything at all.

He didn't move off of her when he was done. Though his weight was almost enough to crush the wind out of her, and her jeans stretched awkwardly across her thighs, she didn't mind much. She stroked his hair, and gazed up at the moon.

"What happened to it?" she murmured.

"Hmm?" He turned onto his back so he could see where she was looking. She sighed, when he slipped out of her.

"Oh," he said. "That. It doesn't concern you any more."

"Does it concern you?"

He didn't reply, and she sighed. "Legato…"

But her temper had faded, along with her strength. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and felt herself beginning to doze.

"Will you come see me?" she asked. "When I'm in Byzantium? Will you check to see if I need anything?"

He didn't have any answer for that, either.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 4**

Leaving Jeneora Rock had been easy. Dominique had mingled with the crowds of refugees and hopped on a truck heading her direction. Any other time, the bruises around her throat, her torn and bloodstained clothing, and the brand new black cotton patch over her eye might have aroused suspicion, but here she was only one of countless injured.

Getting out hadn't been the hard part. It was leaving Legato behind that was giving her more trouble then she had expected.

He had slipped a wallet full of bills into her pocket that morning right before she set off. He'd told her he would turn his back so he didn't see which direction she was going. Just to be safe, he'd said.

Dominique thought he was just being melodramatic.

Then he had shaken her hand before sending her off. He'd had a limp handshake, the kind she'd never been able to stand. He just gave her his fingertips, like he couldn't wait to pull away. That was fine with her. She'd always hated messy goodbyes.

And she knew that when he said he wasn't going to watch her leave, he had meant it. So she did not turn to see him, not even once, as the truck she had climbed onto pulled away and joined the caravan pouring out of the remains of the city, already snaking away into the distance.

For the next three days, Dominique didn't look back.

The closest major city was the industrial metropolis of October, and for the refugees from Jeneora Rock, it was the end of the line. Vehicle traffic slowed to a crawl just outside the city, and the line of men and women on foot wasn't moving much faster. A little before the first checkpoint, Dominique jumped out of the bed of the truck.

"Much obliged," she said, tipping her hat to the driver.

"We're almost there," he said, and winked at her slyly. "You got a bounty out on you or something?"

"I just hate a man in uniform."

"Where are you headed?" he asked.

"Byzantium."

"Never heard of it. You got family there?"

"Seems that way," Dominique said.

"My word," the driver replied. "How a body does get around."

Dominique hotwired the first car she saw, and left October before nightfall. It was good to be in control again. There were no orders left for her to take, save the final ones Legato had given her. If those could even be considered orders. It was best not to think of it that way, she decided. This wasn't a job; it was more like a favor.

Once she was out on the open desert, far from the city limits, Dominique pulled the photograph Legato had given her out of her pocket. He hadn't given her much to go on, not even the woman's name. Dominique's first thought had been that she was Legato's mother, but when she searched the face in the picture she could find no familial resemblance between them. Legato had gotten his looks from somewhere, but you could tell at a glance that this woman had never been pretty. Age had made her dignified and gentle looking, though there was no denying that she was plain, and always had been.

There was no sense worrying about it now, Dominique thought. She would know the truth soon enough. She liked to think that she and Legato had become close, but she knew that he valued his secrets. She had always respected that. Even after the mission in Babylon, she'd kept her questions to herself.

His life before this, where he had come from, that was between him and a dead man now.

Though there were some miles between her and Byzantium, Dominique found the going easy. Word of the disaster at Jeneora Rock had spread quickly, and all she needed to do was mention the doomed city's name and people were more than happy to offer her a bed for the night, a hot meal, a few beers on the house. Even gas for the car – quite literally worth its weight in gold once you got too far off the Sandsteamer routes – could be had at a steep discount if she only chewed her lip and stared off into the distance, and maybe sniffled a little like she was about to cry.

All those little lies, they were like second nature to her.

For as long as she could remember, Dominique had been able to cheat without getting caught. As a little girl, she had shoplifted enough penny candy from the general store to feed an army of children. She'd talked her way out of so many whippings that at some point she'd lost count, though she knew that she'd deserved every one of them.

Those had just been little sins, just practice for the ones that were to come. She never felt guilty, for they were part of her nature. To hate them would be to hate something intrinsically a part of her, like eye color, of hopes, or fears.

But Dominique knew that she could change if she wanted to. Consciously, deliberately, become a new person. She had never thought about doing it before; the woman she had been was just the right woman to survive the world she had built for herself. But if this thing in Byzantium didn't fall through, she would be leaving that world behind.

Hell, even if she couldn't find the old lady, even if things didn't work out, maybe a change was in order.

She had died, but she had come back again. There had been one person in the world who had thought she was important enough to live. Dominique didn't know how many people could say that, but she didn't think it would be many. This was an exclusive club she was in now.

Before the man in red, Dominique hadn't thought about dying much; she had been too wrapped up in being alive. But now, with nothing but miles and miles of dusty highway before her and behind her, she had lots of time to let it sink in.

If this wasn't a good time for a change, she didn't know what was.

It was on the seventh day of driving that she came across the first signpost for Byzantium. That afternoon, just at the set of the yellow sun, she rolled into town.

A few small cottages dotted the surrounding dunes like flies in cream. The town proper was a ghostly kind of place, with one deserted Main Street. A hotel, a grocery, livery, post office, saloon, chapel; all shabby and in disrepair. There was only one building that looked like it had been maintained in the past decade. It was down at the far end of the street, and so big it dwarfed all the others.

When Dominique paused to get a better look at it, she could tell by the way the boards fit together that it was built from quality wood. The walls were whitewashed, and the heavy door was painted red. Construction like that wasn't surprising to see it in a big city like Babylon or Jeneora Rock, but in these little towns that kind of money was unusual. There was a sign above the door, but it was so small that she had to backtrack a few steps into the street to read it.

**LIBRARY OF BYZANTIUM**

Dominique scowled. She had never liked mysteries - especially not ones that cropped up in this part of the world - and a massive library in a town where most people probably couldn't even sign their own names certainly qualified.

She turned and went back to the sidewalk, resolving to give no more thought to the matter. When small towns had secrets, it didn't benefit anyone to go digging them up. But as she stepped back onto the porch outside the general store, Dominique paused. She rapped her knuckles on the doorframe to be certain, but it was as she had suspected: It was made of the same valuable wood as the library across the street. Only it had been ill-maintained over the years, left to warp and crack in the desert heat, and she hadn't noticed it at first.

Now that she looked closely, Dominique could see the same quality construction in the walls of the saloon down the way. And the hotel windows were real glass, not the synthetic stuff that turned milky white after the first couple of summers.

Cautiously, Dominique went inside. The store had three shelves and a counter up front. Behind it stood an elderly man with a white beard and thin white hair. He wore a red checkered shirt, and overalls that were more grease than denim. His eyes were smiling when he turned towards the door, but when he saw her there they turned cold at once.

"Howdy," Dominique said.

He did not reply.

"Got tobacco?" she asked.

He turned, creakily, and took a pouch from the cupboard behind him. "It's old," he said. "Ain't no one around here smokes."

"Old's fine," Dominique said. "Tastes terrible, but it burns better."

She took out the wallet Legato had given her, turning it towards herself so he wouldn't see how many bills were inside. She took out her payment, and the photograph.

"I'm looking for this woman. You know her?"

His gaze shifted from the photograph, up to her face. Out of the corner of her good eye, Dominique could see that a woman had come to the door of the back room. She was as old and stooped as the man, and her eyes were just as unwelcoming.

"Never seen her," the man said at last. "We don't get too many newcomers in town. Nothing much to see."

"Except for the library, right?"

He didn't answer, which was what she had expected. She stuck the picture back in her pocket and turned to go. "Thank you kindly, sir. Ma'am."

She opened the door, took a single step out onto the porch, and then lifted the patch over the Demon Eye. In an instant, she was back inside and safely hidden behind a shelf of dry goods. The man at the counter and his wife saw the door swing open only once, and then bang shut behind her.

Dominique held her breath, and listened. As she had suspected, she didn't need to wait long.

"Who was she looking for?" the woman asked.

"Miss Lexy."

"What's she want with her?"

"Hell, how am I supposed to know?" There was a rustling of packages as he rummaged through the cabinet behind the counter. "Guess I better order some fresh tobacco."

"Don't bother. She won't be staying long."

"Still, it ain't professional to not be prepared…"

Dominique had latched onto the name as soon as it left the man's mouth, but she waited in silence until she was certain they weren't going to give her any more information before she stepped out from behind the shelf. They both jumped at the sound of her footfalls on the boards, and turned to glare at her.

"Forgot my tobacco," Dominique said, scooping the package off the counter. She tucked it into her pocket on the way to the door.

She tried the saloon next. The woman working was nearly as old as the couple that owned the store. She was wiry, and tough as leather, and Dominique was not surprised when she received the same icy welcome when she sat down at the empty bar.

"I'm looking for Miss Lexy," Dominique said. And when she didn't receive an answer right away, she added, "And a whiskey, too, if you please."

The woman poured her a shot, in a dirty glass, and said nothing.

"I'm her niece, you see," Dominique said. "Got to be about her last living relation."

The woman did not seem impressed, and Dominique added, "I'm from Jeneora Rock."

"Don't know anyone named Lexy," the woman said. "Not around here. The whiskey'll be one doubledollar, if you please."

"Thank you kindly."

Dominique paid up, and went out once again into the sun. She stood on the porch of the saloon and rolled a cigarette leisurely, trying to decide if it was worth it to try her luck at the front desk of the hotel, or if she'd be better off taking her case directly to the cottages out behind town. More than anything, she wished there was someone on the street. That the curtains on even one of the windows were pulled back. Then she might be able to shake the feeling that she had somehow stepped out of the living world and into a town populated entirely by phantoms. A city of the dead.

She was just about to head down towards the south end of town when the red door of the library swung open. A woman, bent slightly at the waist, stepped out, and her sensible black shoes sounded heavily on the cobblestone walk.

While Dominique watched, she opened a lace parasol and leaned it back over her left shoulder. She balanced it with one hand; the other leaned on a cane with a silver head. Though the parasol cast strange shadows over her face, once she turned towards Dominique fully there was no mistaking her.

Some years had passed since she had stood for the photograph, but it was the same woman from Legato's picture.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 5**

The first time Dominique tried to call her name, it came out sounding more like a question. Though she had known the woman was in this town, and that they had been bound to run into each other soon enough, she was still shocked to see her there. It was as if there had been a part of her that suspected Legato of making up the whole thing, giving her a thrift store photograph and sending her on a wild chase across the desert.

Like he'd set it all up, just to impress her or something.

But it seemed now that there was at least some truth to what he had told her. Not, she reminded herself, that he had told her very much. Dominique took the cigarette from between her lips, dropped it and ground it out beneath her boot heel. Then she tried the woman's name again.

"Lexy!"

When she turned, Dominique raised her hand in an abortive wave. She started down the dusty street toward her, and Lexy held her ground. She did not seem pleased about the matter. Her eyes were cold and untrusting, but Dominique was starting to get used to that.

"Alexis?" she tried, hoping the woman's full name would set her at ease.

"Actually, dear, it's Alexandra. That will do just fine. We don't stand much on formality around here." She hung her cane over one arm so she could collapse her parasol. "But I couldn't help but notice that you're not from around here."

Dominique pulled the photograph from her pocket. "Is this you?"

She knew she wasn't going to be winning the woman over this way. But she'd had a long trip and a nasty welcome, and she was glad to finally be making some progress.

Alexandra had put on a pair of spectacles that dangled from a cord around her neck, and she squinted at the photo for a moment.

"Dear," she said. "Where did you get this?"

"Someone gave it to me," Dominique said. "I came all the way out here to find you. I don't even know who you are, or why he wants me to look out for you. It seems like the rest of this town is doing a damn fine job of keeping that a secret."

She stopped abruptly, when she realized that this was no way to treat Alexandra, who was no enemy of hers, no hard-bitten hired gun, no cattle rustler who would steal the clothes off her back if she let him. She was just an old woman coming back from her shift stamping magazines and pulp novels with all the dirty parts dogeared, her lips slightly parted in confusion, and her cheeks flushed ever since Dominique had cursed a moment ago.

"I'm sorry," she said. It was an unfamiliar pair of words. "My name's Dominique. I was sent to find you, but I don't mean any harm. Listen, I'll explain everything I can, but maybe I can do it over a glass of water? I came all the way from Jeneora Rock…"

"You poor thing," Alexandra murmured.

"It's not like that," Dominique said. "I was just there on business."

"And now you're here on business? I hope your employer pays you well."

"He pays me enough," Dominique said. "But he can be a real hardass. If you'll pardon the expression, ma'am."

Alexandra did not smile; her mouth remained the same stern, prudent line. But her grip on the handle of her parasol did relax a little.

"Well," she said. "I would like to know what your business is, and why such a dynamic line of work has brought you to such a sleepy town. But I don't see any reason why we can't talk over a glass of sweet tea. I've left some brewing on the porch back at my house, if you'd like to accompany me?"

Dominique could have moaned with relief. "Thank you. I'd like that."

"I do expect an explanation, though," Alexandra said. "A thorough one. And I also expect you to check that pistol on your belt with the sheriff the first chance you get. It's city ordinance, you know."

"I…" Dominique said. Her hand dropped to the gun at her hip, and she was dismayed to find the corner of it peeping out from beneath her coat. Alexandra must have had a sharp eye to see it there; she must have been looking for it.

Embarrassed, though not entirely sure why, Dominique pushed the gun back, out of sight. "Yes, ma'am," she murmured.

"I told you, Alexandra is sufficient. Now, come along."

They walked down the dusty Main Street, toward the outskirts of town.

"It's strange," Dominique said.

"What is, dear?"

"It's so quiet. Like a ghost town. Where is everyone?"

"I reckon they'll come out for their evening constitutionals," Alexandra said. "Soon as you're gone, that is. You probably scared the daylights out of them."

"You don't like strangers much around here, do you?"

"Gets to where you don't expect any of them would have any good reason for coming, that's all."

"I guess we'll see about that," Dominique said quietly.

* * *

Alexandra's house was a four-room bungalow, shielded from the city by a row of dunes. Though the exterior was faded, and the paint had long since gone back to the desert, it was made of the same costly materials as the buildings in town, and so it had stood fast against the sandstorms and the heat for a great many years.

The porch was swept clean of sand. Dominique imagined that the rest of the house was kept just as tidy.

"Make yourself comfortable," Alexandra said. She took the jug of tea from the porch railing, and disappeared inside.

Dominique felt the whole vastness of the desert at her back, and without knowing exactly why, she glanced over her shoulder, as if expecting to see the death she had left behind in Jeneora Rock, imbued with human shape and long grasping limbs. Creeping after her over the dunes, slow but interminable.

She was sure that at any moment she would feel its icy claws at her throat, squeezing. But that moment never came; something frightened it away.

And then Alexandra was at her side once more, setting a glass of tea on the railing by her elbow. Dominique drank half of it in a gulp, before she even noticed that there were thick chips of ice glittering in the bottom of the glass. She welcomed the cold that stabbed her temples; it was the sweetest pain she could imagine.

"Thanks," Dominique said.

Alexandra regarded her with coolly. "Think nothing of it. But…"

"Yeah, I know. I owe you an explanation."

Dominique sat back on the porch swing. It creaked beneath her weight. "I don't want you to worry or anything…"

Alexandra took a seat in the old rocking chair across from her. "Why would I worry?"

"When I tell you who sent me. When I tell you who I work for." Alexandra may have been a tough old bird, but if she knew Legato even half as well as Dominique did, the very name might be enough to make her stringy old heart stop.

"I think you'd better just tell me," Alexandra said. "And let me decide."

Dominique raised an eyebrow. "His name's Legato Bluesummers. I don't know how he got your photograph. But he said you might need someone to look out for you."

There, she stopped, because the expression on Alexandra's face had changed so slightly yet so drastically. It seemed that a smile had bubbled up, like water through the cracks in parched soil.

"You know Legato? Dear, why didn't you say so?"

Dominique was perplexed.

"He's something of a difficult boy, isn't he?" Alexandra said.

"Difficult…boy." Dominique blinked. She couldn't quite imagine Legato in short pants, flying kites with this old woman. Demanding cookies and a ducky at bath time and…

Not quite.

"Those aren't the words I'd use, ma'am. But sure seems like difficult's his middle name." She laughed weakly at her own joke, trying to hide her curiosity. "So…"

"So you want to know how I know him." It wasn't a question.

"I suppose that did cross my mind."

"I could say the same about you," Alexandra replied shrewdly.

"That's fair enough. We can trade. I'll even go first, to show you how obliged I am for the drink."

"The drink's not important," Alexandra said. "The story is."

"I'll try to make it worth the telling, then," Dominique said. "I met Legato about a year ago. I was doing freelance work, and he was in the market. But it was a friend of mine named Midvalley who recommended me for the job."

"What line of work were you in, dear?"

Dominique held the woman's gaze, and she said, very evenly, just to see if she would flinch, "Murders and executions, mostly."

Alexandra just nodded slowly, as though taking it in. "Legato always did fraternize with a bad lot. No offense."

"None taken. Actually, I agree with you. I hate to say it, but I didn't even know how bad his friends were, not until it was too late. I thought Legato just wanted to start up a little independent operation, you know? A bounty here, a robbery there. He'd be the brains, and we'd be the muscle. But it was never really Legato we were answering to…"

Alexandra pursed her lips in distaste, as if she had come upon a dustbunny lurking in the corner of the house. "No need to dance around the subject. I am familiar with Mr. Knives."

"Oh," Dominique said. "You're in some singular company, then. I guess there isn't much more too it. There was a man in red. Legato – I guess that is to say, Knives – sent me to kill him."

"You foolish girl. You could never have done it alone."

"I know. Believe me, I tried, but he just humiliated me. It was Legato who got tasked with killing me. And I did die. Six minutes, he said. If I forget everything else, I'll remember that. He brought me back, though. And he said to come here and protect you. It seemed important. It must be important, ma'am, for him to risk getting in trouble like that."

"I don't know if it's all that important," Alexandra said. "There isn't much that's a danger to me. The one thing that might cause me trouble, you certainly couldn't save me from it. It seems, my dear, that I was not the one Legato felt needed protection."

Dominique lowered her eyes. She pressed the cold rim of her glass to her cheeks, suddenly feeling the heat very keenly upon them.

"There's no need for that," Alexandra said. "You're both young. You have things in common. It's to be expected that you two might develop feelings for each other."

"Pardon me asking, but we are talking about the same Legato, right?"

"We are, indeed," Alexandra said. "The one who's always longed for a strong woman in his life. There's only so much tough love a boy can take before he goes looking for a little compassion."

Dominique blushed again. "I don't much care for all that psychoanalysis stuff. Makes everything sound so logical, and cold."

"But it didn't feel that way at the time, did it?"

"No."

"You don't have to explain it to me, dear. I had a husband, once. He's been dead twenty years, but it's the kind of thing you never forget. We peaceful people fall in love just the same as you outlaws do. Just because your blood runs a little hotter, doesn't mean you've cornered the market on passion."

"I didn't presume…"

"The funny thing about humans," Alexandra said. "The funny thing about us, we just keep living out the same five or six stories, without much variation at all. But every time, we throw ourselves into them so completely, it's like they're brand new."

"You're right," Dominique said quietly.

"Do you think so? Then why would you want to do something to upset all that, like toss your lot in with Mr. Knives."

Dominique opened her mouth to answer. Then closed it again. She took a sip of tea, trying to draw out the moment and give herself time to think.

"I don't rightly know," she said at last. "I guess, sometimes you're in a place where you can't see any good reason to go on living. It's not that you're suicidal or anything. You just see the same day stretching out in front of you; just the same day, over and over again. And behind you, that's all the same day too. So you get to thinking that maybe it wouldn't make any difference, if you just didn't exist anymore. And then you think, hell, it might not be so bad to just take everyone else along with you. If all we're doing is just sitting around taking up space between cataclysms."

"But you don't think that anymore."

"No," Dominique said. "Not anymore. Now that I'm away from them, I can see how crazy that way of thinking really was."

Alexandra nodded. "You've got a solid head on your shoulders. I think you'll fit in just fine here. I'll make up the spare bedroom for you. Tomorrow, we'll take you to the library and get you on the schedule. There's no use trying to get out of it. If you live in Byzantium, you put in your time at the library."

"I not much for ciphers…"

"You'll learn quickly," Alexandra said. "That, I promise you. Now, come along. It's getting dark and I have a leg of mutton thawing for dinner."

"Wait. You said…"

"You'll get your story," Alexandra said. "I haven't forgotten. But certainly it can wait until we have some decent food in us."

There was no arguing with her when she used that tone of voice; Dominique was learning that already. So she just drank down the last of her tea and rose to follow Alexandra inside.

At the door, she hesitated. It was dim inside, and the setting sun threw her shadow long across the wood floor. She turned, and looked out over the desert, but with the sun in her eye, she couldn't see very far. The horizon was all a blur.

"What is it, dear?" Alexandra asked gently.

"It's funny," Dominique said. "It's funny to think, I'll probably never see him again."


	6. Chapter 6

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 6**

After dinner, Dominique paused at the open door, looking outside. The porch had been polished until all the planks shone with a dull gleam. Beyond, the little town had become insistent with the coming of night. It was dark, much darker than any of the cities she'd been in. It made her wonder how she had managed before, surrounded by the thump and squalor of salons, the neon glow of dance halls and bars and all-night gambling dens.

The chill night wind kicked up, and it silenced the crickets.

Her hands were cold.

"Here." Alexandra appeared with two mugs of coffee, tanned with cream and sugar.

"Thanks." Dominique wrapped her hands around her cup, letting the heat soak into the small bones of her fingers. She brought the mug up just under her chin, letting the rising steam melt against her skin.

"Shut the door, dear. We can talk in the parlor."

"Yes."

Alexandra sat in a threadbare recliner. A little black cat crept out from beneath the table, leapt into the old woman's lap, and began to purr. Alexandra stroked its back absently; in this light, her hands looked very pale, the skin as delicate as paper.

"Look at that picture beside you," she said.

Dominique picked the gilt frame up off the table. In it was an aged photograph of a woman with long black hair. Though she had a good figure under her loose work clothes, Dominique would never have considered her pretty. But she was far from ugly, and the word "unremarkable" didn't quite seem to suit her, either.

"That's my mother," Alexandra said. "Remington. But she went by Rem to everyone. When I was a girl, there were still people alive who remembered when the ships came down. She was one of them. She was in the crew on one of the flagship, but she didn't tell people that out of fear that they would blame her for the accident. She wasn't sure herself if it was appropriate that she should have lived when so many people had died, but she'd always held that it was not her that had climbed onto that escape pod in the last moments before the ship burned up in the atmosphere. It was as if some invisible hand took hold of her and guided her through. What she didn't know at the time, she was already carrying me. She was only a few weeks along at the time."

"Bet she had some stories to tell," Dominique replied. She was still studying the photograph, as if she might divine some hidden meaning from it.

"Just one, really. It was a tale, though. She never even told me the whole of it while she was alive. I didn't find out most of it until after she died. You see dear, she knew about that man in red you tussled with. She knew about Knives, too. She said she'd even thought about searching for them a few times, but by then she had a daughter to care for. She took up with a team of explorers who had decided to set out from the wreckage of the ship. They founded a whole belt of towns in this area. Babylon grew into the biggest one, of course. But Byzantium was one of his outposts, too. Then there was Sparta to the south, and Pella, Damascus, Nineveh, Jordan…"

She paused when she saw the expression that was beginning to take shape on Dominique's face. "It was the fellow who led the expedition. He had a taste for the classics," she said, by way of explanation. "You know how those Classicists can be."

"Oh," Dominique said. "Sure I do. I run into them all the time."

"I've heard that he lost most of his expedition trying to return to Babylon. They took a shortcut across the open desert, and most of them didn't make it. He died a few months after returning to the city. I don't know for sure, though. Mother and I had long since settled here in Byzantium."

"You've never lived anywhere else?" Dominique said.

"Heavens, of course I did." Alexandra laughed. "Growing up in a town this small isn't anyone's idea of paradise. I moved to uptown Babylon as soon as I could afford the bus ticket. I was living there when I first met Legato. Such an awkward young boy, and very determined to please that Knives. I think they'd just begun their little venture together at the time."

"I didn't know they'd known each other for so long," Dominique mused.

"Oh, yes, it must be going on twenty years now. I suppose I was lucky I met Legato when he was so young. He wasn't used to that nasty business yet. I talked him out of killing me then. I don't think he wanted to do it much anyway."

"Sounds like he was a different person then."

"Don't be so sure, dear. He sent you here, didn't he? In some ways, he might have changed, but he's still stubborn. Once he has his mind set, no one can convince him otherwise. He explained it to me then. Knives wanted to end my mother's bloodline. He said he had his reasons, and I couldn't get him to explain it to me more than that."

"Did it have something to do with that man in red?"

"Yes, I believe so. But even then, I was just an old woman. I didn't want to get involved in the affairs of men like that. I left Babylon behind, and moved back here, to the house I was born in. It's just as well that I came, too. They needed me at the library."

"Right." Dominique frowned. "The library."

"It's just a library, dear. Don't look so concerned. It won't hurt you."

Alexandra picked up the cat from her lap, and began to get to her feet. Dominique set aside the photograph in her hands, and stood to help her.

"Thank you," Alexandra said. "I suppose it will be nice to have an extra pair of hands around the house. The first room on the right will be yours. My old clothes are in the dresser; if all you have is what's on your back, then take anything you think will fit you."

"I wouldn't…"

"We'll get you fitted at the dressmaker later this week. I'm afraid she probably won't have much that you like, but she can order a few things from Babylon. You'll have to wait for it, though."

"I guess that's all right," Dominique said, but she was uneasy. Alexandra sounded like she was planning on having her here for a long time. She had known all along that was what Legato wanted, but now that she was here it seemed far more immediate. Would she be expected to spend a year here? Two? Five? How long would it take before it started to seem less like a vacation and more like a stay in prison?

Her concerns ebbed again when she saw her room. It was small, neatly furnished with a dresser, a nightstand, and a big bed with a metal frame and a quilt draped over it. There were heavy velvet curtains hung over the windows to keep the sun out. It looked like the kind of room where you could sleep and feel safe, where you could leave your problems until morning and not worry about them following you down into sleep.

"Good night, dear," Alexandra said, then turned and shuffled down the hall to her own bedroom. The black cat followed close at her heels.

* * *

Dominique wasn't sure what woke her the next morning. It was early still, and only a little steel-colored light seeped around the edges of the curtains. The house was dark, very silent, but she was not fooled. She knew by the way she had come awake, all at once, that a noise had been the cause. Something very loud, and very close by.

She slid a hand under the pillow where she had thrust her gun the night before, and slowly she drew it out. She took the indigo silk robe from the hook on the back of the door, pulled it on with her free hand and belted it loosely. The cold stung her bare legs, but she took no notice as she leaned an ear against the door. There was no sound from the hall, no stirring at all. Not even the faint tension that remained in the air for a few moments after a sound has been choked into silence.

Frowning, she nudged the door open with her toe. The hall was dark, silent. She followed it down to where it emptied into the parlor, but there, as well, was as still as a house that had been left untouched for a decade. The kitchen was quiet, too, and when Dominique lifted the curtain and looked outside there was a stiff wind stirring the sand in the front yard, but not a soul in sight.

She sighed, and stuffed her pistol into the belt of her robe. She was just jumpy, which was to be expected. Hell, most people would be a bouquet of shot nerves if they'd had to go through what she had.

But Dominique wasn't most people. She knew that, and Legato had known it too.

With a sigh, she let the curtain fall. She'd just turned away, back toward the kitchen again, when a whistle blew through the house. It was sharp at first, like a tea kettle, but then it grew deep and throaty.

Dominique jumped, her hand already flying to the hilt of her pistol. It tangled in her belt, didn't come free in a single smooth pull, and she lost her grip on it. It slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.

She muttered a curse and grabbed for it as it fell, knowing already that she wouldn't be able to catch it. By the time she had knelt to pick up the weapon, the whistle had faded once more. Dominique pulled back the corner of the curtain. Dawn fell in a bright wedge across the floor. The window had been left open during the night to let in the cool night air, and propped up in one corner was a wooden box strung with nylon strings.

Outside, the wind picked up and gusted across the strings, plucking them at random. Discordant at first, then slurring slowly into ethereal chords.

"Was it playing for you?" Alexandra said from the doorway. Dominique started, shoving her pistol behind her back and out of sight before turning to face her.

"That's the Aeolian harp," she continued. "My husband made it near forty years ago, but I couldn't ever get it to play until I moved back to this house. Turns out it's in a natural wind corridor. Who could have known?"

"Does it always make noises like that?" Dominique said. The harp was moaning now, wounded.

"Not always," Alexandra replied. "It can't do anything without the wind. It just follows along the best it can. I'm going to start breakfast now. How do you like your eggs?"

* * *

It was second sunrise when they left for the library that morning. There were a few people on Main Street. Most of them were old, though Dominique caught a glimpse of a middle-aged couple with a trio of small children, and, if the way the woman's dress billowed around the middle was an indication, a fourth on the way.

"Don't you mind their staring, dear," Alexandra said. "Some people have no manners at all."

"I don't mind," Dominique said. But beside her Alexandra straightened proudly, carrying her head a little higher.

As they went up the cobblestone walk to the library's front door, Alexandra drew a ring of keys out of her pocket. "We keep the door locked for security," she explained. "We've never had any trouble before, so don't you worry about that. But it pays to be safe."

She pushed the door open with some effort, and a wall of cold air poured out, almost enough to drive Dominique back a step. From within came the soft, steady purr of air conditioning. The air smelled very clean, very crisp.

They stepped into the large main hall, lined with many long tables, each piled high with sheets of loose paper. From the center of room came the constant hum of machinery.

"The cataloguing system is a little haphazard right now," Alexandra said. "The east side of the room is for fiction; the front tables are for pages that can be catalogued by name, then author, then date, then subject matter, page number, or anything else you might be able to place. The west is for non-fiction, divided by subject mostly."

She pointed out several tables at random. "Biographies, scientific texts, historical accounts, politics. In the back, you'll find pamphlets, magazines, record liners. Anything that doesn't quite fit anywhere else."

"What…?" Dominique tried, then stopped all at once. She wasn't sure what she wanted to ask, what she could ask.

"You'll get the hang of it. It's not as hard as it looks. Come along now, I'll show you the press."

Dominique followed, but the deeper into the hall she went the smaller she felt. The room was full of loose sheets of paper, reams of them. They would have been worth a fortune on the open market. Paper products were a lucrative industry on a planet with no trees.

But the longer Dominique looked, the more it became clear that there was a system at work here. On some of the tables, pages were paper clipped together, and on others whole reams were held with rubber bands. Many of the pages had fresh notes scribbled in the margins, passages underlined or marked with yellow highlighter. The walls were lined with chalkboards covered in messages like, "S. Lewis: 22 novels" and "sources for CHINA circa 22nd cent" and "Barrett Browning, Sonnets to Ivan" and "Nevsky, who is he?"

"Here it is," Alexandra said. She ran her hand over a panel of machinery, which looked conspicuously out of place in the cluttered surroundings.

Dominique hadn't seen much of the lost technology, but she recognized it at once. The pieces she had seen before had always seemed impossible in their complexity, but this particular one didn't seem too difficult to figure out. It was uniformly smooth and black, about the height of one of the tables, and square. The surface was broken only by a screen that glowed the gray of a television tuned to a dead channel, a keyboard, and a pair of dials flanking it on either side.

"They salvaged it from the flagship after it crashed, but it was damaged. It's never quite worked right since. But if you'll look inside…"

Alexandra turned one of the dials on the side of the panel, and a window slid in the side. Dominique bent down so she could peer inside. The box was full of a thick blue fluid, traversed intermittently with dark clouds. It took a moment for the condensation to clear away from the window, but when it did, Dominique recoiled.

"It's one of those _batteries_," she gasped. Though she dreaded it, she had to look again, just to be sure. It had skin, like a woman's skin, and long hair that looked like it might have been dark. Dominique had once heard a theory that the Plants didn't actually look human; people only perceived them as having human form because it was the only way their minds could process them.

But the thing in the box looked real enough to her, and she was suddenly profoundly grateful that it was only a partial Plant, rather than a whole one. The part inside the panel looked like half of a woman's face, her beautiful features neatly, bloodlessly bisected right down the middle. Half of a cupid's bow mouth, half of an upturned nose, a tuft of feathers sprouting from the temple. One eye that rolled mindlessly in its socket, and then turned, slowly, to focus on her.

Dominique recoiled, uttering a sharp gasp. "Okay. You can shut it already."

"It doesn't feel anything, dear. Don't worry." But Alexandra turned the knob again, closing the window. "It's just a machine, and a broken one at that. But every eight minutes, right on schedule…"

The panel's guts began to purr. What Dominique had once taken for a mechanical sound seemed now less artificial and more human. Like several people humming in harmony, holding the same note for an impossible length of time.

Another window opened, but this one was in the bottom of the panel. A bundle of paper slid out.

"My back's not what it used to be, dear," Alexandra said. "Would you mind picking that up for me?"

Dominique did, but she held it very carefully, between two fingers, and she kept an eye on the machine the entire time.

"It prints between thirty and forty pages every time," Alexandra said. She took the pages from Dominique, and began to thumb through them. "The most important thing is to get them all sorted before the next batch. It only gets harder the more it backs up."

"But what is it?" Dominique said. "What are you looking for?"

Alexandra smiled indulgently. "It's a history, dear. It's where we came from. You can't know where you're going, unless you know where you've been, can you?"

Dominique nodded slowly. "I think I understand. There are hints about the lost technology in some of these pages, right? You're looking for a way off this planet."

"That's what we tell the men from Babylon when they make their audits," she said. "We have to keep our funding somehow. But it's not quite like that. There are a few books on Plant technology, and a few on space exploration, but hardly enough to make a man an expert. Besides, most of what it coughs out these days is history and poetry. Novels. Soft things like that."

"Isn't there any kind of order to it, though?"

"Sometimes," Alexandra said. "Most times not. We just sort the pages the best we can and sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes there's a title or an author on the page. Sometimes, if you pay attention, you'll find a reference to something you recognize and you'll be able to use it to piece together the puzzle."

"It seems impossible…"

"It is," Alexandra said. "We'll never find where most of these pages belong. We don't even know how much of the memory was lost in the crash, or how many full texts are even left. But we have almost seven thousand completed texts in the library, and another twenty thousand that are only missing fragments. We keep them upstairs. You should acquaint yourself with them when you have time."

"But documents from Earth must be priceless. I wouldn't dare…"

"You must!" Alexandra said. "This is a library, after all. Take what you like. Read it, and learn what you can. They're no good to anyone if all they do is sit there and collect dust. They're only a treasure if someone puts them to use. Do you understand, dear?"

"I guess I don't. Not really. I'm sorry."

Alexandra patted her hand. "It's all right. It's not for everyone. But do try to help out while you're here. It will mean a lot to the people of the town."

"I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Here," Alexandra said. "On the machine. When the pages come, sort them the best you can. Someone will come and put them on the appropriate table."

She went back to flipping through the stack of papers in her hand, and suddenly she broke into a broad smile. "I recognize this one," she said, tucking one of the pages into the pocket of her dress.

"I'll never…" Dominique said. But then she sighed. She was gradually beginning to realize that there were a lot of things she would never do again. She'd never have another drink with Midvalley and Wolfwood, or listen to the bullshit artists at the poker table spin tales late into the night. She'd never relive the thrill of the hunt, or the pride of a kill that went off without a hitch.

She'd never see Legato again, and that was that. There was no sense hoping otherwise.

"I'll try," she amended. "I'll do my best."


	7. Chapter 7

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 7**

Months passed.

Dominique wasn't sure if she was supposed to consider her time in Byzantium substantial or not. There had been a time where she would never stay in one place for long, but that had been back when there was always business in the next town over, or trouble in the current one that she didn't want to face. Compared to Alexandra, compared to the other citizens, she was as fleeting as frost on the dunes in the morning.

She went to the library every day. Sometimes, she was only there for a few hours; sometimes she would fall into the same rhythm as the machine and it would be late, very late, before she made it home that night.

It was a different kind of work than what she was used to. There was no end to it, no point where she could say she had accomplished something. Never anything definite to show at the end of the day. But there was a sense of slow building towards some goal. The way, she thought, an architect might have felt as he watched his monument constructed.

Perhaps it was that very feeling that kept her content. The perpetual reminder of something always on the horizon kept her from growing bored. There was no promise that anything would happen, but no guarantee that nothing would.

One day, she knew, she would grow tired of it. She wasn't sure what she would do then, and she didn't think about it much. That day hadn't come.

She did not think about Legato much. Weeks would go by when he didn't cross her mind at all, but then, all at once, he would. He stomach would knot, and she would feel her legs already tensing as if to run. To leave Byzantium behind, and not stop until she found him again. Then she would remind herself, as long as she was here, he knew where she was if he needed her. That helped a little, but not much. It wasn't a thought she wanted to dwell on. It was better to forget him entirely, to know, once and for all, that she would never see him again.

Still, she couldn't do that. Perhaps if she had wanted to, she could have reasoned it out with herself. She could have made herself understand. But she didn't want to, not yet. She wanted to hold him a little longer, until the pain became too much.

Sometimes she worried that she was working only to dull her senses, to pass a long hour. She almost never took out a copy of a finished manuscript out from the library. Only when Alexandra insisted would she borrow something short, and read it all at once, over the course of a night or two, like she was choking down a mouthful of some bitter medicine.

What she liked more was to read the single pages that poured out of the machine in the back of the library. They permitted her only a glimpse, a taste, upon which she could build a world to her specifications. She caught glimpses of the planet they had left to come here, sometimes only brief ones, like what you saw of a dark room when lightning flashed outside. But everything looked better when she saw it for only a moment.

* * *

Autumn didn't exist in the desert. No significant change in temperature or weather marked the new season, but one morning the suns seemed to rise much later, and into a much grayer sky and Dominique knew that two months of unenthusiastic winter had begun.

It was already close to dark when she left the library that evening. Alexandra had stayed to finish binding a newly discovered volume, and she had sent Dominique ahead to start dinner.

She had never known much about cooking before coming to Byzantium, and she'd never had much interest in learning, either. But she was glad Alexandra trusted her enough to ask. It was as if she knew that Dominique would never be able to settle into this life unless she was thrust into it headlong. She would have to take the good with the bad, because she there was still enough of the outlaw in her that she didn't believe in any deal that seemed too good to be true. She still remembered how to get out while the getting was good.

There was a car parked out on the dunes near Alexandra's cottage.

Dominique noticed it from a ways off. It was a smooth black four-door sedan, long as a shadow in the setting sun. She had never seen it around town before, and she kept a cautious eye on it as she knelt in the shelter of the livery, hiked up her black skirt, and drew her pistol from the holster at her thigh.

She had never had any intention of turning the gun in to the sheriff, and Alexandra had always known that. As long as Dominique kept it out of sight, she pretended she didn't notice it in the house.

Dominique held the gun at her hip, cocked but out of sight. The sedan didn't move. The dark windows were nearly opaque in the fading light, but she was certain she could see a silhouette in the driver's seat. She reached up, touching the edge of the silk cloth that covered her right eye, but didn't pull it away.

There was something missing here. She didn't feel nervous, not like she would have in the moments leading up to a battle.

When she came to the top of the dune that overlooked Alexandra's cottage, she glanced down towards the house. It wasn't until then that she felt her heart began to beat faster. Now she was afraid, she thought, but it was not something that would settle with the gunsmoke.

She didn't put her gun away as she came down the dune. She tried to make it look like she wasn't hurrying.

Legato did not glance up as she came near. He didn't rise from the porch swing to meet her. His head was bent, blue hair a curtain in front of his face. All his attention focused on Alexandra's little black cat, which had curled up in his lap, purring like a car with a bad muffler.

"What is it now?" Dominique demanded, but she knew she wasn't fooling anyone. There was no real anger in the words, no real fight left in her at all.

Legato looked up. His yellow eyes swam over her ruffled white blouse, snug black pencil skirt, the up-do she had bundled her hair into to keep it out of her face while she worked. The cloth wrapped over her right eye, softer and stranger than the contraption of leather and steel that had once never left the spot.

He'd never seen her like this, she thought, and she felt suddenly awkward. As if he had come upon her in lace lingerie, or handcuffs and leather.

"I just left work," she said. She knew her voice was too loud.

"Does the job suit you?" Legato asked mildly.

Dominique looked fiercely away. "Come on, Gato. I'll feed you."

At the promise of dinner, the cat hopped out of Legato's lap and strutted inside. Dominique followed him, without looking back to see if Legato was behind her. She knew he was, though. No, she couldn't get rid of him that easily. Ignoring him had never worked before.

He stood in the parlor while she set out a bowl of food for the ca; he didn't seem to know how out of place he was. There was only so long that she could clatter the dishes convincingly before she had to face him again.

"I'm afraid I've displeased you," he said as Dominique stepped into the parlor to meet him.

"I just want to know what you want."

"I don't want anything, Dominique."

"Then why are you here?"

Legato's expression soured. It was a faint shift, but she noticed it.

"I don't know," he said.

"How can you not know? Nobody ever does anything without a reason. Especially you. You sent me here because you needed something from me. But I got the last laugh, Legato. Because I'm happy here. And I'm not about to let you take it away from me without a damn good reason."

Legato didn't answer right away. In the silence that followed, the Aeolian harp in the window began to chirp tunelessly.

"I can't stand that thing!" Dominique cried suddenly. She swept past Legato and threw back the curtains. Her hands worked fast, so she wouldn't have to know if they were shaking. He was still watching her; she could feel his presence like a hot wind at her back. She had almost forgotten for a while, how every move blew right through her. The strange music they made.

She jerked the harp out of the gap in the window and slammed the glass down.

When she straightened up again, he was behind her. She could have jumped out of her skin, but before she could even gasp his hands came down on her shoulders.

"I came to see you," he said. "Because I wanted to. I don't suppose that's enough to satisfy you, but it's the only answer I have."

Dominique pressed her eye shut, and let her shoulders sag. "No, that's fine. I mean, I understand."

She turned, slowly so as not to frighten him off, and slung her arms around his neck.

"Legato…" she sighed, not sure of what to say. She couldn't tell him about her work at the library; she knew it would not interest him. But she couldn't ask him about his work, either. She didn't have the stomach for it any more.

"How have you been?" she settled for.

"The same."

He touched a gloved hand to the outside of one of her arms. It wasn't an affectionate gesture, nor one meant to push her away. Sometimes, she knew, he just had to check to see if she was there. If she really was touching him, and he really was letting her get away with it.

"How'd you get here?"

"I acquired a driver," he said.

"Is that who I saw in the sedan out there?"

"Yes."

"You should bring him inside. Give him some water at least. You're going to let him go when you're done with him, right?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"You should let him go. I'll feel better about the whole thing if you do. If I'm not allowed to get up to any mischief, then you're not allowed to cause any for my sake."

"I'll put him back where I found him when I'm through," Legato said.

Dominique smiled weakly. "Sorry. I don't mean to complain. I'm glad to see you."

"Oh."

"That means you can kiss me now."

"Oh," he said again.

And he did.


	8. Chapter 8

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 8**

Dominique had expected an awkward evening meal, but when Alexandra arrived home she only glanced curiously at Legato and didn't mention that dinner hadn't been started yet.

But all throughout the meal, Dominique could see him sneaking glances at the old woman. At first, she thought he was speaking to her mind, but soon she realized that he didn't have to. Alexandra was good at understanding. For someone who had only known Legato briefly, as a child, she was taking all of this very well. Even Legato's driver, who sat silently at the end of the table chewing mechanically, his eyes glazed and unseeing, hadn't raised much more than a sniff of disdain from her, though she had looked briefly over Legato's white duster and muttered something about not following fashion. Dominique would have gladly died of embarrassment, but Legato only smiled an affable smile, and assured Alexandra that he found his coat quite comfortable, in fact.

After they had eaten, Alexandra, who had never left so much as a glass in the sink overnight, announced that the dishes would wait for morning and it was time they all turned in.

"Legato can have my room," Dominique said quickly. "I'll sleep on the couch. Your driver…"

She wasn't looking directly at him, so she only saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she swore she saw Legato's lips draw tight, as if he was biting back a smile. "He'll be more than comfortable on the porch. But I wouldn't want to inconvenience you, Dominique."

She felt her cheeks turn pink. "It's not an inconvenience. I just have to get a few things, and—"

But she didn't finish. She was already halfway down the hall.

She knew it was impossible for the kind of woman she had been to be happy in a place like this. Dominique may have had a bad habit of being dishonest, even with herself, but she was sure she hadn't been deceived this time. She was, if not happy here, then at least content. She could live like this; maybe not forever, but for now and for a little longer. If that was true, then she simply wasn't the same person she had been.

Legato would know, of course. He already did know. But did he know, too, that her first thoughts when she's seen him on the porch that afternoon were not happy ones? Did he know she'd been afraid?

Dominique had gone to a lot of trouble to keep the life she had once lived separate from the one she lived now, and she wasn't sure she liked one spilling over into the other like this, so casually. Like he belonged here as much as she did.

He didn't. She would not try to convince herself otherwise, because Dominique had never been gone in for those fantasies of domestic bliss. She'd never dreamed of building a life for herself somewhere. And the day that Midvalley had confessed to her that he sometimes wondered what it would be like to run off to Wolfwood's orphanage in the dunes, she hadn't been able to help but feel a little betrayed.

This time, though, she had been the one to do the betraying.

Dominique pressed a hand to her heart, clutching through the soft cotton layers of her blouse. She waited, counting the beats, until her pulse had slowed a little. Only then did she take the Chinese robe down from the peg on the back of the door and begin to change for bed.

Legato came in while she was collecting her toothbrush.

"What are you doing?" she said. "Don't shut the door."

"Is something wrong?" he said. He left the door open, but only a crack.

"Alexandra isn't even in bed yet." Dominique looked away, like she was suddenly very intrigued by her reflection in the mirror on the dresser. "I'll come see you when she's asleep. Probably."

"Probably?" He sounded amused. "Are you expecting to be detained?"

"It just doesn't seem right to do it in her house, all right? Christ, Legato, I'm talking about manners here…"

"It seems to me that you're making excuses."

"Excuses?" Dominique's hands tightened into fists. "I don't need them."

"If you wish I had not come, you only need to say so."

Then his arms were around her waist then, pulling her back against his chest. She shuddered.

"I just feel like you're playing with me," she confessed. "Blowing in like the wind just shifted and brought you here. I mean, I'm practically a lady now. You could at least treat me like one."

"You haven't changed as much as you like to think, Dominique."

"Oh, so you're the fucking expert now? Let me tell you something, Legato. I'm not some dizzy bitch who bends over backwards for a pretty face. I'm not the kind of girl who'll let you act like I owe you everything just because you spared my life. Anyone could have done that. What makes you so special?"

"I was hoping that you would tell me."

She pulled away from him. He didn't let her go easily, but he didn't hold her too tightly, either. She jerked it open and stepped out into the hall, before she looked back over her shoulder to see if he was behind her.

He had followed her, and when he caught her again he backed her against the doorframe. Moved in close enough that she couldn't have slipped past without pushing him out of the way. That was what he wanted, she thought. He was stronger then her, and even if he hadn't been he could have turned her own body against her. If they were going to fight, he wanted it to be physical because that was a battle he would always be able to win.

She did not give him the satisfaction. She leaned back against the doorframe and glared up at him, though one eye to his two seemed almost as mismatched. She knew she could have held out against him for a while, but not forever. Whether through patience or stubbornness, he would out last her in the end.

Dominique tore her gaze away.

"I'm going for a walk," she said. "I need some air."

Legato moved his arm, enough for her to duck under it. She straightened the collar of her robe, and tightened the knot in the belt. "You can come, if you want."

She didn't look back, but she thought she heard him following her. Outside, the breeze stirred the hem of her robe, and the cold air bit at her legs. But the sand was warm against her bare feet, slower to relinquish the heat of the day. She slowed, waiting for Legato to catch up to her. When he was at her side, she took his arm and leaned against him.

They were a scandal waiting to happen. She knew that if anyone from town saw her like this, she'd never hear the end of it. For they would never admit to being bored by their lives, but they were always glad for something to break the monotony. Dominique knew that she could bear their slights easily. It wasn't real pain; it didn't leave a scar.

"How's Midvalley doing?" she asked.

"Do you really want to talk about him?"

"Not really. I just want to know if he's still alive, that's all."

"He is," Legato said. But there was something more that he didn't say. She knew what it was, though.

_For the time being._

He put an arm around her shoulders. She winced, but if he noticed he made no indication.

"You're right," she said. "I don't want to talk about him. I thought I did, but just now…"

She shrugged helplessly.

"I've been in worse places then this. Lots of them. But I've never been so goddamn lonely. I didn't want you to come. You, and Knives, and the whole thing was so strange I was already starting to think of it as a dream I had. It wouldn't have been hard to get over you. I was already on my way to forgetting the color of your eyes."

"But you are glad to see me," Legato said.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I am. There's almost no one my age. Only a couple of young men, and they're both married. There used to be one who brought the mail every week. I'd always take a horse and ride out to meet him and we'd do it like we were just… conducting business. But I guess I got a little excited one time, and left scratches on his back. Ever since then, his wife has ridden in the wagon with him. She doesn't let him out of her sight."

She tugged Legato's arm.

"Come on, this way. I just wish she would have understood, you know? I wasn't going to steal him. I just wanted to borrow him for a few minutes. He wasn't even my type. Hell, Legato, I didn't even like him that much. But she loved him, that you could tell. And I guess maybe if I were her I wouldn't be so understanding. Without him, though, I really started to feel it. You know it won't kill you, being alone like that. You know there are plenty of people who have gone months – even years – without it. And you know it shouldn't be that hard, until one day you don't have any other options."

She looked up at Legato's face. "Am I making any sense to you?"

He narrowed his eyes, like he did when he was thinking. She supposed that people were still something of a puzzle to him. Maybe women gave him more trouble than men.

"You're talking about sexual intercourse," he surmised.

"Sexual…" Dominique laughed, abruptly and begrudgingly charmed. "I guess I'm turning into a prude; I can't even say it. Yes, I'm talking about sex. Fucking, if you want."

She had led them out to Legato's black sedan. His eyes stirred from her face, and to the car.

"Is that what you want from me?" he asked.

"I'd settle for it, sure." Dominique looked down. "It's complicated. I don't want you to take it the wrong way. Maybe we should pretend I didn't say anything."

"No," Legato said. "Why would we do that?"

He stepped away from her, opening the rear door of the sedan. With a tilt of his head, he indicated for her to get inside. Dominique slid across the seat, and reached out a hand, beckoning for him to follow.

Her arms were around his neck before he could even pull the door closed.

"I guess we could have stayed at the house," she murmured against his ear. "Lexy wouldn't have minded, not really. I mean, she wouldn't have given us any trouble about it. But it would have been weird to face her in the morning."

Legato kissed her soundly. "Why are you nervous, Dominique?"

"Nervous?"

"You're talking to cover it up. Don't you know I know your habits by now?"

"You do," she said. "I guess you do."

He slid her robe off her shoulders, kissing along her collarbone and to the hollow of her throat. She shivered a little, though not with the cold; and sighed, though not from annoyance. His hands were steady as he pushed the robe down to her waist, and she knew that he had never doubted, not for a moment.

His mouth sliding lower, trailing loose kisses over her sternum, pausing to caress the underside of her breast, where a sheen of sweat had gathered. She gasped his name, sinking her fingers into his hair and pushing him down. But his hands were already on the knot of her robe, untying it and spreading the silk wings open, and she'd never been very good at holding out.

Legato surged back up into a kiss, arching his back so his spine brushed the roof of the sedan, slipping a hand between their bodies to fumble at his belt. She pulled one knee up to her chest, hooking her foot around the headrest of one of the front seats, the leather cool and smooth against her bare toes.

And already she was wishing she hadn't chosen such an inconvenient place for this, but Legato didn't seem to mind. He tugged himself out of his pants, bent so their foreheads were pressed together. So she could feel his breath on her lips, a little rougher now then it had been. His right arm, the one that didn't match the rest of him - the one he would always turn a little, unconsciously, to hide behind his body – was braced against the window behind her head. He touched her freely with the other hand, starting at her cheek, then trailing down to curl around her breast.

When he first pressed his hips forward and was inside her, his fingers jerked tight, like a vice when you give the handle a careless spin. She hissed, but the pain was good.

He hadn't even taken his gloves off.

Silent, as always. He never told her what he liked, never criticized or critiqued. And she, who had always been practical enough to know that she never got what she wanted unless she made a scene of it, had never needed to do more then say a word here and there and he would recalibrate his course at once.

This time, she didn't need to say anything. He knew how to please her by now, and she wondered if that wasn't half the thrill for him.

But she didn't wonder for long.

When they had finished, he kissed her only once and then slid off her. Extracted his legs carefully from where they had tangled with hers, and knelt on the floor of the sedan. There was enough room, barely, if he pressed up against the edge of the seat.

Dominique sighed, and hooked a hand behind his head to draw him down.

"Legato…" she murmured. He pooled his head on her chest, more worn out, she thought, than he had let on. Traversing the desert took its toll, even on the best of them, then. She knew that, alone, was not capable of exhausting him.

"Guess you'll be leaving tomorrow," she said.

"In the morning," he replied. "It cannot be helped."

Dominique sighed.

"Stay for breakfast, at least," she said impetuously. "I'll cook something good."

"You…?" she felt his lips quirk into an indulgent smile against her stomach.

"Yes, me," she said. "Lexy has been teaching me. I think it's good, to know how to make a few nice things."

"Yes," Legato said. "Forgive me. I just didn't know that you-"

"It's not like I learned it for you," Dominique snapped, cutting him off. "And I think we should go back now. It's cold, and Lexy might worry."

"Yes, you're right." But Legato didn't move right way, which wasn't like him. He kept his head pillowed on her stomach a moment more, his eyes closed and pale blue lashes resting on his cheeks.

It seemed that he breathed a low, soft sigh, the same as the sound of the wind combing through the dunes.


	9. Chapter 9

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 9**

It was after dusk by the time Legato came in from the desert. He had left the driver a half mile from town, and walked the rest of the way. By the time the man made it back to the main road, he'd have a pounding headache but no memories of the past three days.

It would have been easier to kill him, Legato thought, and if he had done it Dominique would never have known. However, she asked for things so rarely that when she did he knew she had her reasons.

Perhaps she was, as they said, going soft. It was something she feared. For Dominique understood as Legato himself did, that the world was a snarl of traps and pitfalls. She had been very careful to mould herself into a woman who could avoid them. And he knew, even if she had not yet realized it herself, that she was afraid of losing her edge.

There must have been others like her. Men and women who knew how to make an entrance and when to make an exit. Whose survival no one would dare attribute to luck.

If that was so, then what hope was there for Knives?

Legato paused, savoring the blasphemy of that thought. What hope, indeed, when Knives knew so little of what real suffering looked like, or of the kind of pity that should attend it. The man in red understood better, but his was an understanding that constricted slowly, until it squeezed the life right out of you.

It was a death worthy of an angel, and Legato knew that he did not deserve it, for he was far from heaven.

He passed under the adobe arch and into Caracas. It was a ghost town now, but until recently it had thrived. After only three days, the whole place had begun to stink. Food abandoned on dinner tables had gone to rot, dogs and horses and cats had begun to creep from the houses and stables and yards and into the empty streets.

You could smell it, even from the street.

People would become suspicious. It was likely that they already were. Special agents from Augusta would come to investigate, and they would find the buildings empty, and 167 bodies mummifying beneath the dunes outside of town.

Yes, that would all happen very soon.

They could spend another night here, but in the morning they would have to move on. His hired Guns would not complain, for even the worst of them had been made skittish by the nights they had spent in this city of the dead.

They didn't talk about it to one another, but Legato knew all the same.

As he came to the first row of cottages, Legato could hear music. The slow wandering of fingers over a fretboard could have been mistaken for aimlessness, but Legato had seen those hands in action before and he knew how quickly wandering could become flight.

Midvalley was on the porch of the house on the left. His guitar was in his lap, his feet kicked up on the railing. He was playing a Spanish ballad. When he saw Legato coming, Midvalley thrust the guitar aside and stumbled to his feet. "Boss…"

"You seem surprised that I'm back," Legato said.

"No, not really." When he came closer, Midvalley took a few dancing steps backwards. "The others… are at the saloon. It's not often you get your pick of all the free booze you can drink, right?"

"Why aren't you with them?"

"Well, when you're a musician, free drinks are generally to be expected."

Legato regarded him coolly for a moment. "You don't have make jokes, Midvalley. I know it upsets you."

Midvalley sighed. "You could say that. Nasty business. I don't know why we had to do this. And you running off like you did, it makes me nervous."

Legato had to admit he liked this new forthright side Midvalley was showing. It was much easier than sifting through the clutter of his thoughts for something he could use. "Perhaps I was remiss."

It was not an apology, though.

"I just could have gone without being left alone with those thugs," Midvalley said. "They're terrible conversationalists. Not that you're much better, Boss, but at least you're sensible most of the time."

His eyes stirred up to Legato's face; there was no fear in them, only reproach.

"Come inside. You're probably hungry."

Legato was. He hadn't eaten since Dominique had sent him off with breakfast two days ago. The taste of the meal had long since ceased to linger on his lips.

"The ice in the freezer hasn't melted yet," Midvalley said as he led Legato back into the three-room house. "The food's a little soggy, I guess, but I don't think any of it's gone bad. I thought it tasted weird at first, but then I realized I was just imagining things. Because death doesn't really taste like anything. Believe me, I'd know."

"I'm sure that you would," Legato said.

Midvalley leaned back against the kitchen counter, unshouldering his guitar and hugging it to him like a shield. "So, where were you the past couple of days, anyway?"

Legato didn't answer right away, but it was only because he was preoccupied with the contents of the icebox.

Midvalley went on, "You don't have to tell me, but I am your Lieutenant, you know. I'm the one who has to keep your hired guns in line when they get full of firewater and start shouting about revolution. And, in case you forgot, I'm the only one you've got left now that Patch is gone and Nick is out playing double agent."

"Yes," Legato said. "And playing it to the hilt, I am sure. But you needn't worry about my absence, Midvalley. I was only visiting a friend."

He knew by the way that Midvalley's lips came together, like a car crash, that his first thoughts were of Knives. That way, it was better. At least it stopped him from asking questions.

Midvalley retreated to the sitting room while Legato made himself a cold supper.

"I'm going to play a little," he called. "I need to practice; I'm feeling kind of rusty. Do you mind?"

"No," Legato said.

He ate, slowly, savoring, and listened to Midvalley's fingers fly through some bluegrass picking, a chromatic scale looming like a dinosaur leftover from his jazz days. A fluttering flamenco solo that tapped like a fist on the inside of a coffin.

After a while, Legato went out to join him. The music was company as good as any human voice, and better than most. Midvalley looked up quizzically, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the fret board, never missing a beat. The music went on, though much diminished and muted by the loss of his picking hand.

"Does the song have a name?" Legato asked, very carefully. Though he had been party to Midvalley's thoughts many times before, he still wasn't entirely sure how one was supposed to talk about music.

Midvalley's lips twisted. But whether he was annoyed by Legato's ignorance or simply scared out of his mind Legato could not divine.

"It's an improvisation," he said. His fingers were still moving over the neck of the guitar in a serpentine pattern. "A _buleria_. It's a song you keep tucked in your belt until the very end of the show. That's when the dancers are all so exhausted they think they're going to drop. They don't think they can go on, even one more song, even one more moment. But then you start to play, and the girls all make that trill in their throats, and then the castanets move in to fill the empty spaces, and they dance again. Those girls in their full skirts, with their makeup running and the flowers in their hair starting to fall. Those boys, dripping sweat, their white shirtfronts stained with it. You have to look at them out of the corner of your eye. Straight on, and they'd just knock you over dead with how beautiful they look."

He brought his right hand back to the strings, strummed two rolling chords, and then fell silent. His shoulders crept up, as if in anticipation of applause, but then fell back again. He looked up, met Legato's eyes.

"It's no way to make a living. You're like an addict. Nothing's certain; you're always looking for your next fix. It's a little bit like murder that way. I used to think there must be some kind of music in gunfire, but no matter how hard I listen, I can't find the rhythm to it. Though once a bullet did graze my ear and I thought it hummed like a pretty girl while she's working.

Midvalley set his guitar aside, and sighed. "Boss, if you're waiting for something, I swear I don't know what it is."

"I wasn't," Legato said. "Waiting."

Midvalley leaned back, looking him over with a critical eye. "How'd you get a name like Legato, anyway? When you first told me, I thought, 'Now, here's a man I can trust.' Too bad it doesn't really suit you."

"It's just a name," Legato said. "It's easier than going by the real one. Practically no one does that anymore."

"I haven't gone by mine in so long, I've almost forgotten what it was. Midvalley, that's just something I made up. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

"I suppose."

"When I was first starting out, I lived in a French enclave in April. There, they called me Gauche."

"Gauche?"

"Sure, why not? You pick a guitar with your left hand, deal cards with your left. Fire a gun with your left, too. Gauche."

"I get it," Legato said.

Midvalley was quiet for a while. "So, what's on your mind, Boss?"

"Why would there be anything on my mind?"

"Well…" He gestured to the plate of food on the table between them, untouched and unsavored since Legato had set it down. "Are you feeling okay? If you get sick, I have to admit I wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do."

"No," Legato replied. "It's not that. I was just thinking."

"Yeah?" Midvalley said warily.

Legato studied that lean face for a moment. Not quite like a wolf's, but definitely reminiscent of a coyote's. Midvalley had lived enough life for four generations, and though Legato did not expect answers from him, perhaps he could at least put words to the problem. Perhaps he would know what it was that had gnawed at him since he had left Byzantium.

"Thinking," Legato said carefully. "About a friend."

"Okay?" With his voice, if not his body, Midvalley seemed to be backing away.

Legato stretched out his thoughts like an open hand and slipped into Midvalley's mind. He could monitor his consciousness from here, pull back if it seemed he would learn too much.

"This friend," he went on. "He has developed a most unshakable attachment to someone. An affection you might call it."

A name flashed through Midvalley's mind. The name was Knives. Legato smiled, smug in the surety that he had thrown Midvalley irrevocably off the scent.

"But this friend doesn't like feeling affection. Though he likes this particular affection quite a bit. But it floats to the surface sometimes when he doesn't want it there. He would like it a lot better if he could keep it caged until he needs it."

"Uh," Midvalley said. A sheen of sweat had begun to form at his hairline. "Sure. I understand."

"But what is most vexing is that this acquaintance of my friend is a very different person. A very difficult person, even. A bundle of contradictions, like thorns on a tumbleweed."

"Okay," Midvalley said. "So this friend. Does he think that, uh, he's too simple, maybe? That he knows his own flaws very well, and she, uh, his _acquaintance_ doesn't seem to share any of them?"

"Yes," Legato said. "It's something like that."

The name – Knives – had been fading slowly into the background of Midvalley's consciousness. But when Legato responded, it was washed away entirely before a wave of pity.

Legato jerked back, appalled and embarrassed, for he knew it had been directed at him.

"I think what your friend needs to realize," Midvalley said, speaking more smoothly now, the words coming easier. "Is that he isn't the only one who knows his flaws. But he's the only one who can't think of anything else. And he needs to know that, though he may want to protect this acquaintance of his, surely this is a person who doesn't need sheltering. Does that make sense?"

"It…" Legato frowned. "It does."

"Good," Midvalley said. "Because your friend sounds like a bastard. But even he deserves to be happy once in a while."

He was smiling, barely, but when Legato lifted his eyes to look at him he glanced quickly away.

"Shit," he muttered. "That was weird, wasn't it?"

"What was?"

"Nothing." Midvalley snatched up his guitar, but Legato could see that his hands were shaking too much to play.

He stared down at them, eyes narrowed, until they stilled.

"Legato?" he said, very softly. Almost a whisper, but a choked one. Husky, as if full of liquid. "Is she…?"

He fell silent, and it seemed that a ghostly mist came to hover on his lashes. It disappeared again almost immediately, without so much as a blink. "She…"

"Yes, Midvalley?" Legato had no idea what he would say if Midvalley actually asked. He might have to kill him, just so he wouldn't have to lie.

"Nothing," Midvalley said. "I was just thinking of something else for a minute."

He unhooked the _cejilla_ from around the neck of his guitar and moved his fingers up the fret board. His hand found the chord it wanted easily, and clutched it like a thirsty man would cling to a canteen.

With his right hand, he began to strum. He sang under his breath, like a nervous tic.

_"O sinnerman, where will you run to  
Sinnerman where will you run to  
Sinnerman where will you run to  
All on that day"_


	10. Chapter 10

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 10**

When, the next morning, Legato announced that they were leaving Caracas, Midvalley was wracked by a brief but violent surge of fear. Though he was eager to leave this dead town behind, he worried about how much they moved around these days. At this rate, Wolfwood would never be able to find them.

For four months now, he'd been out there somewhere, chasing the man in red across the desert. Midvalley hadn't heard from him since Jeneora Rock. Though twice he had been in the same place long enough to get mail, Nick hadn't written.

Maybe he was dead. Maybe he wasn't coming back.

Midvalley knew they had never made any promises to each other. Neither of them was the type of man to made sincerity a habit. But it still hurt when he thought of how easily Nick had fallen under the spell of the man in red. Midvalley tried to put it from his mind, the same way he had strangled his grief in the days following Dominique's death. It was better, he had decided, that she had died first. That she hadn't lived long enough to see what they had become.

But she was alive.

Midvalley flinched at the thought. He knew it, somehow, and yet he refused to believe it. It wasn't that he couldn't, or that he didn't want to, but he knew that there was nothing he could do from here. If he tried, it would only cause more pain for all of them.

He told himself that, while Legato had acted strangely the night before, he had been tired, and maybe the travel was wearing on him. Legato had a pretty delicate constitution, everything considered.

Hell, Midvalley thought, maybe he had just imagined the whole thing.

He checked the clasps on his saxophone case, and then tucked it under his arm, freeing up his hand to carry his guitar. He shouldered his bag, and left without looking back. He hadn't heard any cars pulling out; the other Guns were probably still sleeping off their hangovers. Though Midvalley thought about drinking more and more these days, actually doing it appealed to him less and less.

He looked around for Legato, out of habit more than anything, but the street was empty.

There were only a few cars in town. He picked the most reliable looking one, and hotwired it. All the while, he couldn't help but think that if Dominique were here, he wouldn't have to be hunched over under the dash, squinting at all those colored wires. He was supposed to be the one who was good with his hands, but she'd always been better at stealing cars. She'd get the motor running without even losing her place in the conversation. Sometimes, she could do it without even looking.

By the time the engine choked to life, Midvalley was sweating and his fingers were cramped. He tossed his bags into the passenger seat, rolled up the windows, and turned the AC up so high it sounded like waves of sand beating against a steel shed.

He'd feel better, he thought, much better once he left this place behind.

* * *

It was about the best time he'd ever made.

Midvalley was fifty miles outside of Caracas when the temperature gauge began to redline. It was only then that he realized how hard he'd been leaning on the accelerator the whole time. How desperate he'd been to get away. From the town, or from the men in it, he couldn't say which. It didn't matter, though, because they were all linked now. He, and the Guns, and the city. All partner to the same hideous sin.

At first he had only vaguely resented Legato's new hired hands. They weren't professionals, not like he was. They didn't take this shit seriously enough. But in Caracas he had seen how they warmed to the task of slaughter; hesitant at first, then bolder. Too show-offy for Midvalley's tastes, like a pack of young boys. Daring each other; working one another up to it.

They'd gotten the hang of it soon enough, though. Not just the killing. Midvalley had always been able to stomach murder. Things had happened in that city before the killing even began, things Midvalley hadn't wanted to happen. Things Legato had turned a blind eye to.

That had actually surprised him a little. He'd known the boss for a long time now, and he liked to think that, aside from wanting to wipe out the species, he was actually a pretty ethical guy. Though surely he'd never given the matter much thought, he seemed to instinctually recognize slavery and rape and torture for the ridiculous little grabs at power that they were. He knew what sad, impotent men the perpetrators of those crimes were.

In Eden's Prairie, Midvalley had seen Legato turn a pimp inside out. Outside St. Pete's, he'd watched him take hold of an onlooker and march him into a burning house to rescue a crying baby.

Fiddle with the perspective enough, the man was practically a hero.

No, that wasn't true. All those rescues, all those acts of mercy, they'd just been a diversion for him. Just something to pass the time. When it all came down to it, he didn't really mind if his men raped the daughters of all those bumpkins back in Caracas. He didn't really mind if they'd tied one of the men to the gears inside the windmill, just to see what would happen. If, when they'd run out of people, they'd hunted down even the horses and the dogs.

There wasn't any sense in acting offended. Midvalley knew he was one of them. He was as bad as any, and probably worse than most.

Only it bothered him. It gnawed at him still, long past the point when he could be reluctantly grateful that it did. Caracas chased him like a sandstorm for three days, and every time he looked in the rearview mirror it seemed the town still hovered and shimmered in the heat ripples on the horizon.

Midvalley's hand shook every time he stopped to pump gas into the car. Black coffee was about the only meal his stomach could take. And though he sang to himself the same as he always did on long drives, it didn't pass the time the way it used to.

He'd sung through all the A's that he knew - _Ac-Cen-Tu-Ate The Positive_ to _Autumn Leaves_ – and all the B's - _Baby It's Cold Outside_ to _By the Light of the Silvery Moon_ – and he was already up to _Cry, Cry, Cry_ when he pulled into Garnet City. He'd driven fast the whole way here, almost without a break, but when he checked in at the front desk of the Grand Hotel, he couldn't say he was shocked that Legato had made it before him.

He knew Legato had seen him come in, but he pretended that he didn't. He went upstairs to put his bags in his room.

His first thought had been to sleep for a few hours, but the emptiness of the room put him off that. It was lonely, but that was nothing new. What struck him was the way it seemed to lack the potential to ever become anything else.

He knew that Nick wasn't coming. And rather than face that, he went downstairs again and found Legato in the café, dissecting a slice of tiramisu.

"Hey, Boss."

"I hadn't expected you until tomorrow morning," Legato said.

"I came early. I wanted to talk to you about something."

"So talk, Midvalley."

"It's about Caracas. I didn't like the way shit went down there. I thought it was _unprofessional_."

"What, specifically, might that be?"

"You know what I mean." Midvalley's throat tightened, and his voice came out in a yelp. "You let those Guns of yours run around like savages. I thought the whole reason we were doing this was because we were better than that."

"Oh, is that all?" Legato said. "I'm surprised. I always knew you were sentimental, but I never expected such a brief detour on the way to death to bother you so much."

"That's a lie, Boss, and you know it. It bothers me, and it bothers you, too."

"Then take comfort in the knowledge that they are all beyond the grip of earthly suffering now."

"And don't start talking like Nick!" Midvalley said, louder than he had intended. Several diners at the nearby tables turned to look at him, and Midvalley looked down until they had returned to their brunch.

"Sorry, Boss," he muttered. He looked up at Legato's face, and added quickly. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean that. Don't take it as an excuse to slap me around or nothing, okay?"

He laughed, weakly and without humor.

"I don't know why I would do that," Legato said. "And I don't know what you would have had me do at Caracas."

"I just figured, you cut their paychecks, right? And I guess you probably figured they'd be more loyal if you let them do what they wanted. But they won't. And that's not why you should keep them in line, anyway. It's because you've seen shit, too, haven't you? You've seen worse shit than that."

Legato paused. For a second, Midvalley doubted his gamble was going to pay off. Legato was going to knock him for a loop after all.

But in the end, he only set his fork neatly on the edge of his plate, and pushed the half-eaten tiramisu aside. "Would you like to finish that?" he asked.

Midvalley started to shake his head, but then remembered that he hadn't had a proper meal in going on three days, and, guiltily, he slid the plate closer. What was strangest was the thought of sharing a fork with him, as if some of that venom he kept bottled up inside would leach into him. The dessert didn't taste any different, though. Didn't taste poisoned.

"Thanks," Midvalley said. "It's good."

"I shall take what you have said under advisement," Legato said.

Midvalley smiled weakly. "You're a good boss."

"Thank you, Midvalley." Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he saw Legato smile back. "Was there anything else?"

"No," Midvalley said instantly. But when he thought longer, there was.

"You know where Nick is right now, don't you?" he asked.

"Nicolas Wolfwood? Yes, I have some indication."

"Well, listen, I'm not going to ask you to tell me that or anything. And I'm not going to ask you if he's okay. And I'm not even going to ask you if he's coming back. Because I don't think I'm ready for the answers to any of those."

Midvalley looked away. He hadn't known he was going to bring up the subject, and he had never thought Legato would be receptive to his questions. Now that he was here, he wasn't sure exactly what it was he wanted to know.

"I guess… can you just tell me… does he still love me?"

"Love you?" Legato said. He wasn't mocking, though; he actually sounded thoughtful. "I see. I wouldn't know anything about that, I'm afraid."

"But you…"

"My business is matters of the head, Midvalley. Not of the heart."

"Come on, Boss. I may be a sentimentalist, but even I know love is nothing but alchemy. The right combination of chemicals in the brain."

"So I am to be chemist and diviner for you now?"

"That's not what I meant…"

"Listen, I'll tell you this. There was a time when I couldn't look in on him without finding his thoughts turning to you. They still do, from time to time. But less so, these days."

Midvalley drew a deep breath, taking it in. When he glanced up, Legato was watching him without viciousness.

Midvalley did not think he was lying.

"I guess it's that man in red, huh? Nick never was quite content with the human world. I mean… a priest. Really. In this day and age, when practically no one believes anymore. There he was, still trying to fill up the hole inside him by pouring God into it."

He took a thoughtful bite.

"Don't get me wrong, though. He really believed. The preacher thing, that wasn't just for show. He sure believed in something, at any rate. But can't you see how he was the wrong man to send on that mission, Boss? He'll fall for the man in red's whole sideshow."

"But the man in red, as you call him, is no false prophet," Legato said. "No mere mortal would stand a chance against him. So don't feel bad."

"I do feel bad though," Midvalley said weakly. "But I guess you'd know a thing or two about the gods and prophets racket. Thanks for trying to make me feel better."

"Is that what I'm doing?"

In no mood for Legato's games – they'd always been a little too broad and unsubtle for his tastes anyway – Midvalley swallowed the last bite of tiramisu and nodded. "That's what you're doing."

"Perhaps, then, I know what it's like to be far away from the thing you prize most in the world. It's like half of you is here at this table, and half of you is mired out there in the desert. Not exactly where they are, but somewhere close."

Midvalley blinked, unsure of what to make of that.

"Yeah," he said. "Actually, that's exactly what it's like. I'm impressed, Boss."

When Legato didn't answer right away, Midvalley couldn't help but wonder if he was embarrassed. He'd been pretty talkative lately, by his standards. Maybe he was up to something. Or maybe just using him as another way to pass the time, the way he had used all those damsels in distress before.

Or maybe, he was trying to make friends.

Midvalley wasn't sure which distressed him the most, but they were all very distressing propositions indeed.

"Anyway," Midvalley said. "Thanks for thinking over what I said about Caracas. And thanks for the cake. I'd better head upstairs and get cleaned up now."

"As you wish."

And then, just because it seemed like Legato was making the effort, he added, "I guess I'll see you around."


	11. Chapter 11

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 11**

The first two years Midvalley had spent employed by Legato had gone slowly. A job here or there to break the monotony, but most days went at the dragging, measured pace that goes along with working for a living. He had always taken Legato for a man who was as careful in his work as an accountant, as systematic and safe as a middle manager. Back then he hadn't known he was capable of the swift and decisive action that had characterized their last campaign against the man in red. Only the ruthlessness had been familiar, comfortingly so.

Midvalley was the only one left now. Even Nick had walked out on him for the last time; taken the one journey Midvalley knew he wouldn't be coming back from.

Headed south, to warmer climes.

They'd both known it was coming. Hell, they'd even talked about it before; there'd been no sense being childish about it. But when they were together, death had always seemed a long way off. Wolfwood had told him once that, even during the times when they fought for their lives, he had felt a profound peace in being together.

Had it been like that with the man in red, too?

In the end, maybe it had all come down to which of them was better at staving off the darkness. If that was the case, then Midvalley couldn't blame Nick for the choice he made.

Maybe he'd just wanted to believe that a preacher of all people might be a little better at caring for the lost and the blind. Especially a good preacher like Nick, one who'd really believed the line he was selling.

Hell, he'd almost had Midvalley ready to convert a couple of times. Sometimes you could get just the right combination of whiskey and ardor in him that he'd start slinging sermons, twirling them like a marksman twirls revolvers:

_Thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Mount Gilead. Set me as a seal upon thine heart; for love is strong as death…_

Midvalley had never learned what happened once Nick had preached it through. He'd always wanted to find out, but he'd get scared before the end, and he'd kiss him to shut him up. All it had ever taken was a kiss to extinguish the fire that blazed up in him. It had been a handy trick, but it was as useless to him now as any knowledge of ancient history. It had always seemed that there'd be time for to make it to the end, but now Midvalley knew he'd never get the chance to hear it all.

One thought comforted him, if only a little. Nick may have been gone, but at least the rest of the Guns had gone ahead of him.

At first, Legato had sent them one at a time. Measured and metered them out. But by the end he had flung them at the man in red, two or three at a time, only to see them cut down. Midvalley couldn't say he was sorry to see them go. Not that pack of beasts.

* * *

Midvalley and Legato boarded the Sandsteamer out of Babylon at dusk, and they rode it all through the night and into the next day. Midvalley did not know their destination, but he knew where they were going. The desert slipped past, and the man in red drew nearer, like a beacon piercing the night sky. Midvalley knew already that he would not die at that man's hands. It would have been a fine enough revenge if he had; Midvalley would have liked to be able to brag about it when he saw Wolfwood again.

He would see him very soon, now.

That comforted him, barely. But all the same, Midvalley spent the trip sweating through his suit, hands buried in his lap to hide their trembling. As if he could have hidden something like that from Legato.

Legato, who seemed to be taking this all rather well. He spent the whole trip gazing placidly out the window, even when it got too dark to see much. His eyes were heavy, but as far as Midvalley could tell, he never slept a wink.

On the evening of the second day, they pulled into Stetson City, and Legato rose without a word and disembarked. Midvalley followed him off the Sandsteamer, and in the last light of the last sun he stood on the edge of the platform and stared out into the city. Most of the streets were dark at this time of night, but there were bright spots, tight little coronas of activity.

"Is this it?" he asked.

"Not quite," Legato said. "But we are close now."

It seemed that he smiled, very faintly and unpleasantly.

"Great…" Midvalley said. His voice was weak.

"You're very tense. I don't think I've ever seen you quite like this, Midvalley. Aren't you worried that you'll hurt yourself if you keep worrying so?"

"Not really."

"Go out and find something pleasant to do this evening. I insist."

"Something… pleasant?"

"Is that not the expression? Something… pleasurable."

"You mean, you want me to go have fun?" Midvalley said.

"Something like that. Will it not put your mind at ease?"

"Maybe."

But he knew it wouldn't. All the same, he wasn't going to complain about a break from Legato. It wasn't that the man made him uncomfortable; it wasn't that he frightened him. No, he had become too constant. Midvalley hadn't found him to be anything but statically familiar in a long time. What bothered him now were the nagging reminders that he should angrier than he was. He should have blamed Legato for everything that had happened. Sometimes he tried, but he always recoiled at the last second. He couldn't hate that man, not now that he was the only other one left.

It wasn't that he understood - Midvalley knew that he didn't understand a goddamn thing. It was just that he came closer than anyone else alive.

Midvalley ducked into a club and within the hour he had picked up two girls who liked to pretend that they lived on a timeline as short as his own. He forgot their names within moments of being told, just as they forgot his as soon as it left his mouth. But they had been swooning with boredom for hours before he arrived, and it didn't take much to convince them to join him at the bar of his hotel.

The girls liked him because he listened to them talk about their problems without mentioning any of his own. Because he laughed at their jokes even when they weren't funny. It didn't hurt that he bought all the drinks. They ran up a hefty tab, but Midvalley wouldn't need the money where he was going. Two coins to tip the ferryman for a job well done would be enough.

When the girls caught on that he knew the handsome stranger with the yellow eyes, who sat alone at the end of the bar, it was just another point in Midvalley's favor.

He hadn't expected Legato to know the proper etiquette in a situation like this, and so for the first half hour Midvalley tried thinking it very hard at him. If Legato ever heard him, he made no indication, and Midvalley soon grew weary of doing the work of two. He began to feel simultaneously compacted and torn by the girls, who kept leaning in, pressing closer, even as they glanced more and more often in Legato's direction.

The boss wasn't biting. Midvalley knew he didn't have much interest in girls, and he'd always loathed being touched, but he didn't have to act like it was such a burden, looking the way he did. Knowing Legato, though, he probably thought of it in exactly those terms. He probably treated his beauty just like a curse.

It was enough to make you sick. And Midvalley had long thought that one day he was going to march over there and tell Legato exactly what he thought of nonsense like that. But he knew now, he'd never get the chance. It was going to pass him right by, like so many chances had.

Still, when Legato stood without a word and moved to depart, Midvalley rose to follow him. He untangled himself from the girls with a muttered excuse, and gave chase.

He caught Legato at the top of the stairs, just before he turned down the hall towards their rooms.

"Hey, Boss?"

Legato turned to face him, and Midvalley realized he didn't have anything to say. His mouth hung open for a second, waiting for the words to come and fill it.

"You okay?" he settled on, at last.

Legato sighed softly, and turned away once more.

"I mean," Midvalley said. "I brought one of those girls back for you. If you're interested. They both like you fine, you know. Probably wouldn't have to talk to them much or anything…"

"I'm afraid I am _not_ interested, Midvalley."

"Me neither. Just… going to head up to bed, I guess."

"Come along, then," Legato said.

Midvalley did. They walked down the hall in silence. Legato unlocked his door while Midvalley fumbled for his key, and he had already disappeared inside by the time Midvalley managed to wrestle it into the lock.

He stopped there, with his hands hovering over the knob. "Boss…?"

Legato was already gone. Midvalley left the key hanging like a broken limb, and went to knock on his door. A moment before his fist came down, Legato opened it from within.

"Can I ask you something?" Midvalley said.

"Is it complicated?"

"Not really."

"All the same, come inside. Your friends may come looking for you."

"Yeah, thanks," Midvalley muttered. "Don't know what came over me. I'm usually nicer than that, at least to pretty girls. I've never up and ditched one before…"

He trailed off, sinking into a chair.

"Can you tell me?" he sighed. "I wonder if you even know. Can you tell me what I'm thinking right now? Can you tell me what I'm feeling? I don't know if I could ever sort it out, not if I had years and years ahead of me."

"Is that really what you came to ask me?" Legato said.

"Yeah. That's about the sum of it. I'll feel a lot better if you can tell me. Maybe I'll even get some sleep." He laughed weakly. "Who knows?"

Legato was quiet for a moment, and then he nodded. "All right, Midvalley. I will indulge you. Just this once."

He stepped forward, tugging his glove off. It was his left hand that he stretched out and pressed against Midvalley's forehead as if in benediction. The right, he kept pressed close to his body.

A diffuse yellow glow welled up behind his eyes, pressed at his lashes but did not spill over them.

"You're thinking about Nicolas Wolfwood," he said.

"I am not!" Midvalley snapped, but he sounded so defensive that it could not have been anything but a lie.

"You are," Legato said. "Though you would not be had you any other choice in the matter. He left you, jilted you. He hurt your pride, and that has always been the hardest pain for you to bear. You're thinking now… that you've tried every trick you know to forget him, and not a single one has worked. It is at once a frustration and a relief. This time is different than all the others, and for that you are thankful. Because you know that such a feeling must be love, and now you can say you will die having known it."

Legato sighed, and looked tired. "Is that sufficient, Midvalley?"

When he saw the light go out of Legato's eyes, when he knew he had withdrawn from his mind, Midvalley jerked away.

"It's embarrassing," he muttered. "I feel like a fool."

"When people find out I can see into their hearts, they become very suspicious. They assume I must do so constantly, to the exclusion of anything else. As if I had nothing better to do than sift through their little secrets and sins, day in and day out."

"I never thought about it that way," Midvalley said. He was still staring up into Legato's eyes, and he looked away with a violent twist of his head.

"Nick was a hell of a guy," he muttered. "I miss him a lot, Boss. I just… really, really miss him a lot. Sometimes I just wonder…"

Legato turned away when Midvalley reached to wipe the dampness from his eyes. Whether it was out of politeness or pity or disgust, he could not say.

He swallowed, jaw clenched, embarrassed that he would cry in front of Legato. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the way Legato's profile had looked in the dim lamplight remained stamped on the insides of his lids.

"There was more though," Midvalley said. "I mean, wasn't there? More to me, than just him. Even if it was something stupid, like fear, that would at least be something."

"There was more," Legato said. "Yet I dare not speak its name."

"It's not what you think…" Midvalley muttered. He turned back, certain that if he could just see Legato, just look at him for a second, the agony that would wash over him would be punishment enough.

But Midvalley hadn't anticipated how close Legato would be to him still, nor had he expected the way he would be watching him: bemused and lazily curious. He was waiting, Midvalley thought, for an explanation. And he knew from experience that Legato could wait for a very long time.

That made Midvalley more nervous than anger would have. And he pushed quickly out of the chair, intending to slip around Legato and make for the door. But Legato stepped forward, cutting him off.

Midvalley started, nearly lost his balance in his haste to reel away. It was only by catching hold of Legato's biceps that he managed to keep his footing.

Legato didn't look bemused anymore; now he looked genuinely startled.

"Is something wrong? I warned you that you might not like it…"

"Yeah, you sure did." Midvalley looked away, but he couldn't let go, not yet. "Guess the truth hurts sometimes. Guess it's one of those things that people say so much you forget how true it really is."

"Do you?" Legato said. "I don't."

"For what it's worth, Boss, I didn't mean no disrespect." At last, Midvalley screwed up the courage to look back at him. "I mean, about you. It's not personal. Someone else, they might think that's insulting, but you don't, right? You understand. That it's not you just for the hell of it; it's you because you're the only one left who knows everything. I know you wouldn't ask me any stupid questions…"

Legato narrowed his eyes. "I don't know what you mean. You're behaving very unpredictably."

"Am I?" Midvalley said. "I guess I am. To hell with it, then…"

They were so close that it was easy. Even if Legato had known it was coming – which surely he didn't; the idea had just popped into Midvalley's head this second – he would have had a hard time avoiding it.

Midvalley closed his eyes, dipped his head in and kissed him.

Legato made a questioning sound between their pressed mouths. His muscles wound tight, but he didn't pull away.

Eventually, Midvalley had to. He touched his lips with trembling fingers. "Funny. I'd always thought it would be colder…"

"You must have thought about it often, then," Legato said.

"From time to time." Midvalley smiled weakly. "No sense trying to keep it from you now."

"Mm," Legato said, noncommittally.

"Well, is there? Eat, drink, and be merry… No, it's not that exactly. It's just that, can't a guy want to blow off a little steam once in while? Can't he want something to distract him before his execution? Have I ever asked you for anything, Boss?"

"No," Legato said. "You have not. Are you asking me for something now?"

"I don't know," Midvalley said. "I'm just sick of you making me feel _bad_ all the time. Like I'm always guilty. Even when I'm doing something good. Like trying my best to stay more faithful to Nick than he ever was to me."

"Is that really what you want?" Legato replied. "To be faithful? Or do you want to hurt him, even though you know it's too late for him to see you?"

Midvalley gasped, as if with a sudden and sharp pain.

"Come now," Legato said. "One does not have to see into your thoughts to know that they are consumed by vengeance."

"Vengeance…" Midvalley's eyes narrowed. "Well, it's as good a reason as any, right? It's practically respectable, these days. A good pedigree. Guess it's pretty convenient for you, the way things turned out."

"I did not orchestrate this," Legato said, with amusement in his voice.

"You only wish you could have been so clever."

"I'll know better next time."

"So will I," Midvalley said.

But he knew enough already, and he had begun to suspect that vengeance wasn't such a bad note to go out on. If there was not going to be an encore, you had to make sure you ended the set not with a crash, not with a whisper. But with a low, prolonged hum that nipped at your heels all the way home.

Legato, he was so bad at reading people sometimes, he'd never know until it was too late. But he still had something precious; something he was, if not living for, then at least not dying for. Would he see her again before it was all over? And if he did, would his lips still burn with a betrayer's kiss?

Would she taste it there, and know that it was because he hated them all? Nick, and Legato, and Knives, and the goddamn man in red. And even her, in the end, because she'd been the one who outlived them all.

There was only one way to find out.

Midvalley gripped Legato's collar tight, and kissed him again. Legato's lips parted to accept it, like a sleepwalker. Like he never suspected a thing.


	12. Chapter 12

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 12**

By the time Dominique read about Midvalley's death in the _Babylon Banner_, he was already in the ground. The news was always slow to circulate out to Byzantium, and this particular edition of the paper had been published a week ago to the day. Once you factored in how long it had taken the news of the battle to trip along the telegraph wires to this hemisphere, you had to figure that the corpse they'd dropped in the unmarked grave in the potter's field of Stetson City wasn't looking its best.

Dominique laughed at that, because she was too horrified to do anything else.

She laughed for almost a full minute, and then she stopped abruptly. She read the article again, slower this time, letting her eyes linger on each word, feeling her tongue kick against her teeth and the muscles of her cheeks expand and contract to get a feel for the shape each phonic would make in her mouth. It was a trick she had learned for dealing with the more complex texts that came her way at the library. It was how she forced herself to understand.

But she felt nothing.

Not misery, not anger. Not even the dull denial she had once wrapped around the deaths of the people who meant the most to her. Not even shock, which was the promise that she might feel something later.

Could it be that Midvalley had become a stranger to her? That his death was as a stranger's would have been?

She heard Alexandra coming slowly up the walk from the chicken coop, and Dominique darted back inside. She folded the paper over, and it cracked fibrously at the crease. That surprised her for a moment; she had become accustomed to the silken pages that poured out of the library's computer and she had forgotten that the cheap silica alternative, manufactured from sand, the only resource the planet had in abundance, behaved so differently.

Dominique hurried back to her room, and shoved the paper in the top drawer of the dresser, next to her pistol.

She took a moment to compose herself, and even ironed out a lie in case Alexandra asked what she had been doing. She would not question her, Dominique knew that. Nor would she have had any reason to lie in turn. She was not concealing anything of importance.

By the time she returned, Alexandra was storing the eggs in the icebox. She suspected nothing, as there was nothing to suspect.

"You got a lot," Dominique said.

"Season must be turning. They never lay much in the winter."

"I can't believe it's been that long already."

Alexandra said nothing for a moment, until the last of the eggs was secured. "You ought to try that tart recipe again," she said. "There are some to spare for the advancement of science."

"I don't know," Dominique said. "It came out so bad last time…"

"That's because baking powder and baking soda are two different things, dear. As are flour and sugar."

"Suppose I can see if Constantine will let me buy something from his greenhouse…"

"It is not in my nature to spy," Alexandra said. "But I could not help but notice that he has the loveliest crop of raspberries fairly bursting off the vines at the moment."

Dominique smiled, and went to start the water for her coffee and Alexandra's tea. "If they're so pretty, maybe we just shouldn't eat them at all."

"Nonsense," Alexandra said brusquely. "They've accepted their fate. It is in their very nature to be eaten. Or not, as the tart may dictate."

"If I manage to pull off something edible this time, you're going to have to get off my case for a little while."

"That remains to be seen, dear."

They were quiet after that, engaged in various small tasks around the kitchen. Alexandra washed the bowl she had used to bring in the eggs, and Dominique ground the beans for coffee. It was only when they were both finished and the only thing left to do was wait for the kettle that Dominique spoke again.

"I think… Legato might show up again soon," she said casually.

"Is that so?" Alexandra sounded only mildly interested, as if Dominique had done no more than predict a thunderstorm.

"I've got a feeling," she said. "That doesn't bother you, does it? Having him here? I suppose I can get him a room in the hotel. They've only got three boarders right now, and they'd probably be glad for a little extra money…"

"Don't be ridiculous, dear. I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing to that dear boy. Of course he's welcome here!"

"Dear boy…" Dominique smiled faintly.

"What's so funny about that?"

"Nothing. You just always call him that."

"Is it inaccurate?"

"I guess not," Dominique said. "I like it."

The kettle chirped, and Alexandra took it off the stove.

"Tell me," she said. "Does this feeling you have tell you how long Legato might be staying with us? A little longer than last time, I should hope."

"No," Dominique sighed. "Probably not much longer than that."

"Such a pity," Alexandra said. "A pity indeed…"

* * *

All through her shift at the library that day, Dominique anticipated his coming. She thought about Legato to keep herself from thinking about Midvalley, though when the trick failed and she found her thoughts shifting to her old friend, she was frustrated that she still could not grieve. She would miss him, but she had missed him for a whole year already. It would take some time before her heart was able to resize itself, to wrap itself around a whole new way of never seeing him again.

She would, she promised herself, figure it out later. She had plenty of time for thinking these days. It was much, much rarer for something like a visit from Legato to break the monotony. That was something solid, something you could lay a hand upon and be comforted by the weight there. Death did not have such a heft to it; it only dragged you down like it did.

And so all through her shift at the library computer, and the hour she spent in the preservation room – she had been promoted a few weeks ago to the less stifling job of binding and repairing torn pages – Dominique thought of Legato. How he would look, what he would say. How she would reply. Thrust and parry. Advance and retreat, until finally they found themselves at an end, which was never really all that much different from where they had begun.

He might not come at all. Dominique knew that, but she tried not to consider it.

She left an hour before the end of her shift. Constantine, the head librarian, would usually have scowled over such an indulgence, but this time he let her go without a fuss. Alexandra wouldn't have told him, not something so intimate, and so surely the truth must have been stamped all over her face.

Dominique hurried back to the house, so sure that Legato would already be waiting for her. So disappointed when he was not.

With great deliberateness, she began to measure out the ingredients for raspberry tarts.

It was not long before there was a knock on the door.

Dominique did not smile. The thrill was too sudden, too tremendous, to show on her face. Slowly, deliberately, she finished rolling the dough, dusted the flour off her hands on a rag, and went to the door.

She had thought she had prepared herself for anything when she saw Legato again, but she had not thought of what she would do if he had not come with benevolent intentions. She realized her oversight a moment too late, when she pushed the door open and his name came to her lips and died there.

It was something in his eyes, a yellow intensity that she had not seen too many times before, but enough to know what it meant.

Dominique backed away a step, uncertain. She should have been on her guard from the moment she saw the paper that morning; Midvalley was dead, and that left him with only one loose end left to tie up. Yes, he liked things tidy like that.

He stepped over the threshold, and Dominique backed away again, her hand scratching uselessly at her right hip where a gun no longer rested. Her hip struck the back of the couch, and she jumped, whirling around to face the new attacker.

By the time she looked back, he was upon her.

"Wait..." she managed, but his hands were already around her waist. He kissed her, fiercely, and she felt at once some of the harried desperation rush out of him. His muscles unknotted, and he seemed to shrink a little, down to a size she could more easily manage.

"What's wrong?" she said, when he had pulled away.

Legato did not answer, and she sighed. Already she was forgetting just what it was about him that had shaken her so.

"It's good to see you, too," she muttered

He looked at her for a moment. His eyes were like panes of stained glass laid over a deep fissure in the earth.

"Midvalley…" he started to say.

"I know," she replied. "I heard."

"I'm sorry."

"I doubt that," she said. "But it's all right."

For the moment, that was true, but Dominique turned away from him. She felt that she should have been angrier, and she wondered if acting the part might help her feel it.

"Come on," she said. "I guess you're thirsty."

Legato followed her into the kitchen, and she poured him a glass of Alexandra's sweet tea. He didn't drink right away.

"Every time I come here," he said. "You're more disappointed to see me."

"Every time?" Dominique sniffed. "You act like you come around so often…"

She turned back to the half-made tarts on the kitchen counter. Her hands were steady, not because she was calm, but because she had trained them to be that way over the long years she had spent holding a gun.

"Anyway," she said. "I'm not disappointed. You should know by now, I'm always glad to see you."

He took a drink, and said nothing. And she knew she had confused him, and he had been hurt by it.

"What are you going to do now?" Dominique said quietly.

"Now?"

"Now that Midvalley's gone, I mean. Is it over?"

"No," Legato said. "It's not over."

She nodded, as if it didn't bother her. As if she could think over his decision rationally, without any of herself getting in the way.

"You'll die," she said at last. "But he won't even kill you. That's how much of a monster he is."

"I've known this for a long time," he replied. "I thought that you—"

"I knew!" she snapped. "How dumb do you think I am?"

She jerked open the oven door, and pushed the tray of tarts inside.

"And I'm not angry!" she said, before he could respond. "So don't accuse me of being angry. Don't accuse me of not wanting to see you, Legato. Because most days you're the only thing I _want_ to see. But I'm not angry. At least, I'm not angry at you. Just tell me, though. Just tell me you came to say goodbye and get it over with."

Dominique turned away. Once she couldn't see him anymore, her tears came quickly. Soaking through the silk cloth wrapped over her Eye.

He sighed, and took her shoulders in his hands. He didn't try to pull her close; he only held her like that, feeling her shake with quiet sobs.

"I'm sorry," he said at last.

"You're…?"

"Last night," he said softly. "I had a dream. I was young - younger than I can remember. And I needed someone to save me, but it wasn't Knives who came. It was the man in red. He found me first, when I needed someone. He took me away, and he raised me from a child. I was a different man."

"Some dream," Dominique said, turning at last to face him.

"You hated me," he said. "In my dream. You didn't understand. And I didn't understand, why it comforted me so to watch you kill. How you could work evil, with no evil in your heart. And then, in that dream, I was all alone."

"It was just a dream."

"Yes," he said. "But there was truth to it. Maybe you should be angry. I've given you reason enough. And I'm glad that it will end like this, because this is the only way it could have ended."

"But it isn't," Dominique said. "I know I never asked before, but maybe I should have. Only, once you get it in your head that something's impossible to do, it's like it's impossible to even think about, too. But there's no reason why it would be impossible. For you to stay here, I mean. With me. Or we could go somewhere new. Or, if you asked, I'd go with you. To face him…"

"I would not," Legato said. "I promised you this place. I will keep my word."

"Legato…" She laughed shakily. "You're so weird. Like some relic from another time. You still believe in good and bad, things like that. Decency and honor. Don't you know how strange that is?"

"I know," he said.

"Maybe that's why this place is so hard on you," Dominique sighed. "Maybe you're right; you really shouldn't stay in this world. I don't want it to hurt you any more."

"So you understand?"

"I always understood. Just because I don't like it, that doesn't mean it's going to change."

From the way he looked at her then, she knew his heart ached. From the way he kept so very still, she knew it was a pain that comforted him; she knew he was trying to keep it close for as long as he possibly could.

So, Dominique thought. He loved her. So that was it.

He would never tell her. Not because he didn't know, but perhaps because he didn't know how. But Dominique, who had always been proud of her ability to torture information out of even the most resigned of captives, surprised herself by not minding much.


	13. Chapter 13

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 13**

When Alexandra arrived home that evening, she seemed pleased to see Legato, and not in the least surprised. Dominique could not help but wonder if either was genuine, though. Alexandra had never liked to have weapons around the house. She hadn't even wanted Dominique to keep her pistol, and had only relented and allowed it to remain – unloaded and out of sight – when Dominique had explained to her its sentimental value.

Perhaps she applied the same consideration to Legato. For he was more deadly than any pistol, and almost as indiscriminating. Once you had him in your hand, you needed only point the direction and squeeze the trigger. He would do the rest.

There was something in him. Something like death. Dominique had been away long enough that it sometimes startled her, but not long enough that it horrified. It didn't take a professional to see it, but from the way Alexandra chatted before dinner, the way she set out her good china, and, after the meal, served strong coffee in dainty decorative cups, Dominique could have sworn she didn't suspect a thing. She never would have guessed that Alexandra knew even more than Dominique had ever dared to ask.

As soon as she got the chance, she cornered Alexandra in the kitchen, out of sight of Legato.

"It'll just be for tonight," she said. "He won't stay past tomorrow morning. That is all right, isn't it?"

"Heavens, dear," Alexandra said. "What are you going to do, throw him out on the street?"

Dominique shrugged. "I would, if you asked me to."

"Well, I won't," Alexandra said. "That poor boy can stay as long as he likes, as far as I'm concerned. He certainly needs it."

"Well, shi—" Dominique bit her lip. "I mean, hell. You're a lot more charitable than I am."

"Just more trusting, dear," Alexandra said. She set her hand on Dominique's shoulder. "You didn't know him like I did. When he was just a little thing. If you had, you'd see how little he's changed. He's still like a boy in so many ways…"

Dominique shrugged helplessly. "I can't even imagine it."

"That's all right, dear" Alexandra said. "Why don't you go keep our guest company? I can finish tidying up in here just fine on my own."

Dominique went out to the sitting room where Legato was waiting.

"I'll get your room ready for you," she said quietly.

"You will be sleeping out here, I assume."

"I guess so," she said. She stepped closer, boldly, and he caught her arms as if she had stumbled and needed to be steadied. "Do you think I should?"

"I don't know."

"Just tell me!" Dominique hissed, afraid of her voice carrying into the kitchen. "Tell me you want me with you."

Legato's eyes narrowed. A faint line appeared between his brows; it showed up whenever he was feeling hurt. "I always want you with me, Dominique. Every moment. Did you not know that?"

She looked away. "Legato…"

"I would have told you earlier, if I'd thought you didn't know." He was apologizing now, or fumbling for the right words. Either way, it was like watching a suffocating man struggle for breath.

She didn't like it, and she kissed him to shut him up. And his mouth was like stepping out of the shade into the warmth of the day. She felt it all through her.

They must have stayed that way for a long time. They probably would have stayed longer still had Alexandra not cleared her throat softly. She was standing in the doorway from the kitchen, watching them. Dominique gasped, and pulled away. She looked guilty, a criminal, in her own home.

"Now dear," Alexandra chided. "There's no need for that. And there's no need for you to make up a bed on the sofa, either."

"But Lexy…"

"None of that, now," Alexandra said briskly. "I'm many years passed being shocked that you might want to share a room."

"He'll be leaving in the morning," Dominique said, but it did not sound like an apology, or an explanation.

She felt a slight pressure on her arm. Legato had just taken hold of it.

"You'd best hurry, then," Alexandra said.

Dominique lowered her eyes, taking hold of Legato's arm and drawing him back towards her room. She couldn't help but notice how quickly they had gotten here. It wasn't, she thought, that Legato was eager. He had just become accustomed to taking orders, and good at carrying them out efficiently.

"Wait…" she said, and grabbed the edge of the door before he could push it shut.

His eyebrows lifted, patient and expectant. But she said nothing, had nothing to say. Only she knew that if he closed the door now, they would be leaving all their past on the threshold like a pair of muddy boots. She would have only what took place next, between these walls, to satisfy her heart for a long, long time.

They might have waited like that for a long time – he watching her, and she watching him watch - if Alexandra hadn't interrupted her. She had to pass them on the way to her room at the end of the hall, and when Dominique heard her shuffling steps on the floorboards, she pulled away from Legato.

Alexandra stopped, peered into the bedroom and looked them over. Her lips pursed thoughtfully.

"What's done is done," she said stiffly. "I won't have secrets in my home. It benefits no one."

"Yes,' Dominique said. "You're right."

"Goodnight, dear," Alexandra replied.

It seemed to take her a very long time to make it down the hall to her room, even longer before she had shut the door. Dominique didn't look up, but once they were alone Legato pushed the door closed. He tipped her chin up, and kissed her.

His kisses were less awkward every time.

"I never wanted you to see me like this," she said, quietly. "You've known me at my worst. Half-crazy. I didn't want you to know I could be good, too."

"You weren't as bad as you think," he replied. "Nor are you as good."

"That's a relief."

She leaned against him, and he circled an arm around her shoulders and led her inside. She let down her hair in the mirror, and behind her she heard the soft rustle of Legato undressing. It seemed deafening, and she scrambled for something to say to drown it out.

"Did you know about the Library?" she asked.

"Only a little," he said. "I understand the theory."

"Alexandra says there are other little towns like this one. One that's dedicated to compiling a history of the old planet, and one that's busy compiling all kinds of data on this one. Maps, and lists of all the plants and animals. That kind of thing. And there's one where all they do is look up at the stars."

Legato did not reply.

"It's kind of nice," she said. "I feel like I'm really doing something for once."

"It will all be gone soon. Then none of it will matter."

"You're probably right. A lot of people would probably say that none of it matters now. If it doesn't put food in their bellies of roofs over their heads, then they can't see the good of it. There is this one book I read, though. It's about a man who can't stand other people, so he hides from them. He just hides, and thinks about how much he resents them. And he comes to hate them more and more. But he needs people, too. He can't live without them. So once in while, he has to creep out and try to make some kind of connection with someone. But in the end, he always gets scared. He pulls away at the last minute."

"Is this a true story?" Legato said.

"I don't know. Probably not. I just thought it was strange, that someone could write a book like that. Make something out of nothing, a whole life out of thin air. I think that there must not be another job in the world where you can build so much out of so little."

She finished brushing out her hair and turned to face him. He had slipped out of his coat and shirt, and kicked his boots off.

Dominique touched his shoulder with the back of her hand, running her fingers down his chest. "It gets pretty cold out here at night."

His arms went around her.

"I did miss you," she said.

"I suppose you are still lonely."

"I've got some friends," she replied. "They're not my usual scene, but they're all right. I guess that's not what you're talking about, though."

"It wasn't," he said. "And if you want to use me again, I won't be offended."

His expression when he said it was so serious, so earnest, that Dominique had to laugh. "That's only one of your many practical uses."

She set both hands on his chest and shoved him back towards the bed. His knees hit the mattress, and he sat down. Though she followed him, she went slowly. In the past, they'd always been rushed. They'd never had a whole night to spare, never even a whole hour. Even if they had, he would not have allowed it.

But this time, he had nowhere else to go. For once, he might have a chance to know this as something more than a depressing necessity. A reminder that he was mortal, and needed the same things as everyone else if he was going to scrape by.

Dominique knelt down by the bed and touched his knee. He didn't swing his thighs apart right away, and she slid her palm up between them, tugging at the buttons of his jeans. His hand sifted through her hair; he twisted it around her palm and then let it fall. Though he didn't pull enough to hurt, it seemed that each tug uprooted something from the very core of her. Churning her up, like mud in the water.

She peeled back the front of his jeans, parting them over blue curls. He took her hand between his, drawing it to his lips for a kiss, but she pulled away, annoyed.

She stroked her fingers over him through the stiff fabric of his jeans, parting them over a thicket of tight blue curls. His cock strained up against the denim, uncomfortable until she slipped a hand inside and tugged it free.

His hands fluttered up at his sides, but he did not touch her. White moths in black gloves. He'd take them off soon, the left one at least. The right one would stay where it was, and the marks that crossed his arm would stay, too.

Dominique had never thought to ask Legato about his scars. They were the only ones on him, as far as she could tell, but they were fearsome. Scars like that meant a life had changed; they were like the red circle around an important anniversary on a calendar.

Later, she could ask him what had caused it. He might even answer; he might not be ashamed at all. But she would forget long before she had the opportunity. Let him keep his secrets, and cultivate his little mysteries. It was what she had liked about him all this time. Because she had always been better at not caring when she wanted to then caring when she didn't, and this way there was less of him to know, less of him to hold.

She could love him, a little, because there was a part of him that merited it; a part so small it matched her own.

He set a hand on the back of her neck and he said, "Go on."

Dominique arched against his hand, glad for the weight of it. Gloved or not it was steady as a star. She licked her lips, and her mouth close enough to him that he could feel the moist heat of her breath on his bare skin. Flicked her tongue out, lapping up the little bead of fluid at the head of his cock.

Gripping his cock in one hand, Dominique lowered her head, pulled him into her mouth with her tongue.

Legato didn't make a sound, but he practically never did. Sometimes it had frightened her into silence as well; sometimes it had made her want to make enough noise for both of them. But she knew that he was ignorant of a great many things, and how to show his appreciation was one. Maybe there was a part of him that assumed everyone else could see into his heart, as easily as he could tear open theirs.

He stifled a gasp and leaned back on one his hand, arching his hips up against Dominique's mouth. The other hand, already on the back of her neck, lifted to tangle in heavy black hair. He pushed her down roughly, though without malice, and she took him in without trouble.

Right before he came, he gave her hair a jerk. It tangled on his fingers as if on barbed wire, and she bore down on him like a sprinter in the last stretch.

His breath left him in a rush, and he came. And she swallowed it down, because it was his and it was a little late now to be disgusted by that. When she lifted her head, he wasn't looking at her, but soon his head rolled forward, and he blinked as if clearing away stars. She didn't kiss him.

"Dominique…" he said.

He seemed about to say something, and she shook her head to stop him. She pushed to her feet, brushed at her knees as if to clear away dust. But there was never dust on the floors in this house.

"Lay down," Dominique said. "I'll be back in a minute."

She stepped behind the folding screen to change. She'd never been particularly modest, but she had once used a screen like this for cover during an ambush. Bridal suite of the Flagstone Hotel. Messy, but it never had been clean.

Dominique reached for the silk robe that hung from the back of the door. Hesitated a moment, then took it down. She knew that all through the town of Byzantium, corseted farmwives and unmarried girls who had swore they were saving themselves for their wedding night but hadn't quite made it were doing the same. Dominique knew she was not quite one of them, but then she had never wanted to be.

She'd never been happier than when she'd been taking lives, nothing had ever been so fierce, or so free. But she could stand to rest for a little while. Legato hadn't been born a killer; he had the brute strength, but not the instinct for it. And Dominique knew that when he walked out the door tomorrow, it would take a part of her with her. If she could choose, she would give him the part that knew death as well as a face knows its reflection.

And she would stay here. Bide her time. Wait to see what would happen.

Dominique knotted the robe around her waist, and stepped out. Legato's eyes did not swing towards her right away. He was staring at the window; the shutters were drawn, but didn't seem to keep him from seeing out.

It was one of Midvalley's habits, and seeing Legato assume it was like watching a bad actor trying very hard to capture a complex study. They'd been together at the end. She knew that, and she was relieved. Midvalley was strong – in many ways, he had been stronger than her – but he needed people.

He'd probably made a damn fool of himself, Dominique thought. It made her smile, just a little, and Legato glanced toward her.

"Did I keep you waiting?" she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

She plucked at his shirt, and pressed her palm against his chest. "I see you left all the work for me."

He sat up as she pulled his shirt off over his head and took her in his arms. "Do you mind if we don't talk?"

"No. I understand."

She kissed him, and neither of them made a sound. The bed didn't even creak when she swung one leg over his hips, straddling him. She settled her weight on his thighs, and dragged his hands down his chest, curving them so he could feel the bite of her nails against his belly.

He was hard again. She could feel his cock pressing against the inside of her thigh. His lips were on her throat, worrying the sensitive spot where neck and shoulder joined. Following the slant of her collarbone, easing down her chest.

Slow, slow, as if they had all the time in the world together.

She bent over him, bracing one palm against the head of the bed. She gripped the base of his cock in the other, holding it still so she could ease herself onto it.

Her hips twitched, and she took him in all the way. She bit her lip before she could make a sound, respectful of the silence he loved so. Legato reached out, setting his hands on her hips to steady her. His eyes flashed with what might have been lust, or something easy to mistake for it. His head was tilted back against the wall, and his blue hair was in a state of disarray so artful that she could almost imagine he had planned it.

When he turned a certain way, Dominique could feel the slats of his ribs pushing through the skin. But then he turned again, and it was the last thing on her mind.

He was so quiet that she clutched his shoulders as if to assure herself he was there with her. She dug her nails in to his skin, hard enough to draw ten crescent moons of blood, but still the only sounds were the sharp hiss of breath and the wet slide of skin on skin. He shuddered slightly with each thrust, as though she were hurting him.

Maybe she was.

Perhaps he liked a little pain with his pleasure. Perhaps it made it more real for him, the way that bruises were sometimes the only way to remember a fight the next morning.

The bed seemed to fall out from beneath her then, and the thin walls of the cottage collapsed outward, spun away on the wind as if they had no more substance than sand. There was darkness, and a pulsing silence that snatched her sense away and smothered her thoughts into silence. And Legato dragged her down, down, down further still into darkness, and the light was reflected in his eyes.

And she could not look away as she watched it recede. Smaller now, and smaller still, until it was gone entirely.

She stayed close to him, for as long as she could. She caught her breath, shifted her grip and felt the blood under her fingernails. She spotted the pouch of tobacco on the bedside table, but didn't reach for it right away.

Finally, she leaned back against Legato's bent knees. He looked up at her, his eyes liquid and expectant. He probably wanted to talk now, just when she had realized she didn't have anything to say. She sighed, and reached for her tobacco. There was a rolled cigarette sitting on top, and she pulled it out, blew on it to scatter the stray flakes, and lit it.

The flame threw back the shadows.

Dominique swung her leg over and climbed off him. He didn't try to stop her. She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him, facing the shuttered window. Outside, the wind was blowing. She could hear it battering the house, making the old boards hum.

Tugging at the strings that pierced through her and bound her to this bed, and the strings that bound her to this town, and the strings that bound her to the graves of every corpse she had ever laid out. Soon, a song would begin to take shape.


	14. Chapter 14

**The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 14**

She slept late the next day. Dominique could tell by the pattern of sunlight on the floor that it was not more than fifteen or twenty minutes past her usual reveille, but still she suspected Legato's hand at work.

He was gone. She hadn't thought that he might leave without a word, but she was not surprised. When she set a hand on his side of the bed, it was not yet cold but it was not warm, either. The pillow was sunk a little in the center, but it no longer held the shape of his head.

Dominique squeezed her eyes shut for a second, and pressed her palm into the indentation. It held no memories. They had evaporated, like the warmth and the weight of his body. His side of the bed was clean; there was not so much as a stray hair left on the sheets.

It was just as well, Dominique thought briskly. He would have been as bad at goodbyes as he was at hellos, and at everything that came in between.

When she had dressed, and tightened the silk scarf around her Eye, and brushed out her hair, Dominique waited another few minutes before leaving her room. She didn't want to seem too eager, even to herself. She didn't want to think that she was rushing, or else she was afraid she might really begin to.

In the kitchen, a pot of coffee was warming on the stove. Dominique poured herself a cup and began to open the curtains to let in the sun. Before the big window in the front of the house, she paused, and looked out over the desert.

There wasn't much to see. The dunes looked the same as they had the day before, though she knew that the wind would have moved them slightly. Changed the slant of the sand imperceptibly, made the desert migrate a little further. Straining, always, towards some goal that only the collusion of the wind and the sand knew. If they came upon a canyon in their travels, they would spill over the edge and fill it. If they came upon a mountain, they would batter themselves against it until it was worn down.

They chased the horizon, until it inevitably curved around on itself and brought them back to where they had begun.

In the distance, almost where the road converged with the main highway, she thought she saw a red haze, like a cloud of dust kicked up by a car as it moved away. She could not be sure. One sun was high in the sky, and the other was at the horizon, and where their rays intersected mirages could sometimes be seen.

Besides, Alexandra was coming up from the henhouse now with a basket of eggs in her arms, and Dominique didn't want to be caught staring. The woman had an excess of sympathy, and practically no one to spend it on. There were days when Dominique appreciated it, but this was not one of them. She wasn't exactly miserable, and she wasn't quite angry. But whatever she felt, she felt it very strongly, and she wanted to be alone with it for a little while, to explore all the corridors and hidden rooms that had opened up inside her.

When Alexandra came in, Dominique caught her frowning a little. All of the concerned and curious looks she kept casting in Dominique's direction might have gone unnoticed had Alexandra known to stand on her blindside. But it was a trick she'd never quite gotten the hang of.

Dominique finished opening the curtains, and she said, "I'm sorry you had to get the eggs again this morning. I don't know how I overslept."

"It's all right, dear," Alexandra replied briskly. She was still watching Dominique's turned back, watching it very closely, as if unaware that Dominique knew. "It's good for these old bones to get some exercise once in a while."

"All the same. I don't want you thinking I'm getting lazy on you."

"Well." Alexandra began to unpack the eggs, lining them up on the counter. "Let's just not make a habit of it, shall we?"

"By the way," Dominique said. "You'll only need to make breakfast for the two of us. Legato's not here."

"I know. I sent him off this morning."

Dominique didn't reply right away, wondering if Alexandra could be coaxed into saying more. Surely, Legato had not stayed long, but Alexandra was good at cutting to the heart of things. They'd talked, mostly about him, but, Dominique thought with a thrill of vanity, surely about her, too.

But Alexandra was silent, and after a while Dominique said, "He got an early start."

"Yes. He said he had miles to go."

"Nowhere around here he would have had business, that's for sure."

Alexandra had arranged a quartet of eggs on the counter, and now she wrapped up the rest and put them away in the icebox. Had Dominique counted the seconds, they would have been no more than ten or a dozen, but it seemed to take much longer. A long time seemed to pass indeed before Alexandra sighed and said, "I am sorry, dear."

"Don't." Dominique said. She had not shouted, but it was a sharper tone than she had ever used with Alexandra before. She was a tough lady, impervious to rust and erosion, but it never seemed right to raise your voice around her. A careless word might knock her back like a slap.

Dominique scowled, but did not apologize. "I'm not going to say there's nothing to feel sorry for. But I already feel plenty sorry for myself this morning. So if you don't mind, let's not talk about it."

"If you like, dear."

"Give me a week," Dominique said, in the same voice she used when placing a bet at poker. "Then I'll be able to look back and laugh."

"And until then," Alexandra replied. "You'll have to eat just the same. Now, come over here and help an old woman reach the frying pan."

They cooked, and ate in a silence both familiar and familial. While Dominique finished washing the plates, Alexandra tied on her straw hat, and took her parasol from its hook by the door.

"If you wait," Dominique said. "I'll walk into town with you. I'm almost done here."

"You take your time, dear. Come along when you're ready." Alexandra reached into the pocket of her dress, and drew out a square of paper. "He left this for you. He said to give it to you once he was gone."

Dominique took a deep breath, and didn't raise her gaze from the sink. "All right. Thanks."

Her voice didn't shake at all. And after Alexandra had gone, Dominique forced herself to finish drying the plate in her hand without hurrying. She rubbed her hands absently on her jeans; even after she had dried them, her palms felt clammy.

Alexandra had left the note on the low table by the door. It was a postcard of an adobe wall with a swirling mural of a lush green garden painted on it. Heavy willows tumbled into the foreground, and the trees that receded into the back were studded with flowers like small jewels. Raised yellow letters across the top of the card read, _Keep Babylon Weird_.

The handwriting on the back was Alexandra's tidy script, but the words were Legato's. He'd never learned how to write because he had never needed to.

_"Everything has happened just as it was meant to. I know that you understand this, and so you will not take anything I have done as an insult or an error in judgment. You have always been good at understanding. Nothing has changed. I am still glad you will walk this planet a little longer."_

He hadn't signed the card, but below the last line of text there was a stutter of ink spots, as if Alexandra had expected him to say more but he had not.

Slowly, as if in a trance, Dominique went to the front door and pulled it open. She stood on the threshold looking out, unable to take that first step onto the porch. She could see Alexandra's calico dress against the dunes, her footsteps not yet swallowed up by the sand, but where she had thought she had seen the red cloud on the horizon there was nothing but sky.

If she hurried, she knew she could catch him. And yet she did not move.

She could not leave, not even to die with him. She was condemned to stay, here amongst the things he had touched, in the bed that had grown cold almost the moment he left it. She did not hope for his return, nor for the oblivion he had fought for.

She hoped for nothing. And yet she felt expectant. It seemed inconceivable to her that the intersection of their lives could have affected him at all, but still she knew, as long as he lived, the time of cruel and unexpected miracles was not yet past.

~End


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